


My Life is not a Horror Movie, Derek

by DiscontentedWinter



Series: I Know Where Babies Come From, Derek [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Abduction, Angst with a Happy Ending, Deputy Derek Hale, Kid Fic, M/M, Mpreg, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pack Feels, Stiles Has Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-04 22:13:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 38,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5350343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/pseuds/DiscontentedWinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles keeps dreaming of people in robes with knives.<br/>With chanting. In Latin.<br/>And he mentioned the knives, right?<br/>That can't be good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel to I Know Where Babies Come From, Derek.  
> You should probably read that first, or this will make even less sense. 
> 
> My posting schedule on this will *not* be as crazy as it was with IKWBCFD. Partly because I like to think I learn from my past experiences. But mostly because I'm also working on about four different novels at the moment. *weak laugh* 
> 
> This isn't beta read, so all spelling mistakes, continuity errors and general fuck-ups are proudly my own. But if you tell me about them, I'll try to fix them. 
> 
> I hope you guys like this one as much as the first one! 
> 
> Also, I keep forgetting to tell people I'm now on tumblr:[thisdiscontentedwinter](http://thisdiscontentedwinter.tumblr.com)

 

Derek is going to kill him.

Not literally kill him, probably. Maybe. Hopefully. But he will definitely look at Stiles with his most impressive bitch face, and Stiles will wilt underneath the power of that gaze like a tiny, trembling flower. Not because he hasn’t got the balls to withstand Derek’s bitch face, but because he knows exactly what that bitch face will be hiding: Derek’s hurt. And if there’s one thing Stiles has learned in the three years they’ve been together, it’s that Derek’s hurt is like fucking kryptonite.

Because, okay, Derek is a good provider. He’s a great provider. It’s just that his need to provide is hardwired into his wolf brain, and he told Stiles he’d fix the loose step on the back porch, and the fact that Stiles obviously didn’t believe him and tried to fix it himself will make him a grumpywolf for years. Well, days. Well, hours, but the hours will be bad enough, okay?

And the fact that Stiles hurt himself while trying to fix the back step will probably make Derek retreat deeply into his dark cave of self loathing and man pain, and then Stiles will feel bad too, and it will turn into a vicious circle of guilt and self recrimination and stomped-on feelings for both of them.

It’ll be just like that trip to Ikea all over again.

Stiles very carefully sets the nail gun aside, and considers his options.

He is home alone.

Derek is in town doing the grocery shopping and Claudie is at kindergarten.

His dad is at a conference in L.A. and not due back until tomorrow.

The rest of the pack is away at college. None of them will be home until Thanksgiving.  

Really, he has no other options.

He sighs and uses his free hand to pull his phone out of his pocket.

It could have been worse. He could have left it inside.

Stiles tries very hard to concentrate on the positive while he dials Derek’s number.

“Stiles?” Derek answers immediately.

“Heeeey,” Stiles says in the worst fake casual tone in the world.

Derek can probably hear the pain in his voice. “Are you okay? What happened? Is the baby coming?”

“The baby is right where you left it, big guy,” Stiles tells him. “But you know how you told me not to fix the back step, because you’d do it?”

Derek’s answer is a low growl.

“About that,” Stiles says, looking down at his injured hand and trying not to panic at the sight of all that blood. “Well, I may have nailed myself to the porch.”

***

“It’s a flesh wound,” Stiles tells his dad the next day, waving his bandaged hand in his face.

His dad looks at him, then looks at a glowering Derek, then looks back at Stiles again and just shakes his head.

“There I was,” Stiles says, slurping on the milkshake his dad brought him from town. His dad is seriously the best. “Stuck at home, bored out of my skull, and I thought, ‘Hey, I can fix the step!’ One accidental stigmata later, and here I am.”

He beams, but his dad doesn’t look very amused.

And neither does Derek.

“What’s a stigmata?” Claudie asks from her primary viewing position on her grandpa’s lap.

“A type of praying mantis,” Stiles tells her, and what the hell? Lately he’s got into this terrible habit of bare face lying to their daughter. The crazier the lies, the better. Luckily Claudie is too suspicious to believe anything that comes out of his mouth.

“Grandpa?” she demands.

John Stilinski rolls his eyes. “Really, Stiles?”

Stiles grins.

Last week his dad had to explain that the Higgs boson particle wasn’t a glam rock supergroup from the seventies. He’d done that part pretty well. It was watching him try and explain what it actually was that’d had Stiles in hysterics for hours afterward.

Before Stiles can hear how he’s going to explain the stigmata, Derek grips him by the shoulder and steers him out of the living room and into the kitchen. Unfair!

“Stiles,” he says, and his expression is grave.

“Seriouswolf,” Stiles says.

Derek doesn’t even take the bait. Instead he backs Stiles against the counter and corrals him there with a hand on either side of him. “You could have been seriously hurt. You’re lucky you didn’t give yourself any nerve damage.”

Stiles knows. He just...he hates being cooped up in the house and feeling useless. “Der...”

Derek takes one hand and rests it against his very pregnant belly. “Stiles.”

Dammit.

Manipulativewolf.

He doesn’t even have to say anything else to make Stiles feel guilty. Because yes, Stiles should have been more careful. Because yes, the child he’s carrying, the crazy magical gift inside him granted to him by a mage from an alternate reality, is the most important thing in their lives.

Stiles hears Claudie giggling from the living room.

The equal most important thing.

“I’m sorry, Der,” he whispers. “I just get stir crazy, okay?”

“I know.” Derek lifts his hand and cups Stiles’s cheek. “I know you do.”

The last few months have been hell.

Blah blah magical pregnancy, gift from another dimension and all that, but Stiles is terrible at being under house arrest and it’s not like he can just pop into town to grab some takeout or go to the store or see a movie, can he? He’s a pregnant guy. Even in Beacon Hills, where most people have learned to turn a blind eye to the weirdness or risk going certifiably insane, that shit is not going to fly. Ever since Stiles started to show, he’s been stuck at home, and it’s killing him, okay? It’s killing him.

“Hey,” Derek says, and swipes his thumb gently under Stiles’s eyes.

Stiles didn’t even realize he’d started crying.

He’s also hormonal all all fuck, and it’s driving him insane. He has weird crying jags, followed by the desperate need to consume as much food as he can, followed by feeling so ridiculously horny that last week he almost jerked off to an episode of The Clone Wars. Ashoka is hot, okay?

“Oh, fuck,” Stiles whispers, and drops his head onto Derek’s shoulder. Derek’s arms close around him. “I’m sorry. I’m so stupid.”

“Shh. You’re not stupid.” Derek rubs his warm hands up and down his back. “I know being stuck home all the time is driving you crazy.”

“And the waddling,” Stiles mutters into Derek’s shoulder.

“You don’t waddle,” Derek says, and Stiles can hear the fond, exasperated smile in his voice.

Stiles jabs him in the ribs softly. He knows he waddles.

“Three more weeks,” Derek says quietly. “Three more weeks.”

“Yeah,” Stiles sighs, closing his eyes. “Yeah, I know.”

“And when the baby’s here, the first thing we’re going to do is go to the diner and order all the curly fries,” Derek promises.

Stiles hugs him closer.

Sweetwolf.

***

The worst part about being a nineteen-year-old married pregnant guy—the worst part, not the weirdest part, because there is nothing in Stiles’s life right now that is not absolutely fucking crazy—was having to postpone college. Stiles made the very logical and grownup decision that he couldn’t wander around campus looking like he was smuggling a watermelon under his shirt, but he misses it, a bit. It was supposed to be great being home with Derek and Claudie, and he knows he can always go back to school when he’s ready, but Derek and Claudie are actually rarely home. Derek is working, and Claudie is at kindergarten.

Stiles is pissed about that.

Not the kindergarten thing. The Derek-has-a-job thing.

“A man needs a job, Stiles,” his dad had said when Stiles had tried to bitch about it to him.

And of course his dad would say that. Mostly because it’s his dad’s fault. Not that Derek doesn’t look totally hot in his deputy’s uniform—which is a whole other thing Stiles has to deal with. It’s the same uniform his dad wears. It shouldn’t be hot—but Derek actually doesn’t need a job at all. Stiles has seen his bank statements, okay? Hell, Stiles is entitled to half of everything on those statements. Derek wouldn’t have to work a day in his life if he didn’t want to, and they could still eat caviar every day. If, well, it wasn’t disgusting. The point remains, Derek doesn’t need a job, and he only became a deputy because Stiles’s dad pretty much strong-armed him into it. As much as a middle-aged human could actually strong-arm a werewolf. There had been a lot of emotional manipulation, okay? Derek might be a big strong alpha, but he’s no match for a determined John Stilinksi.

It’s just that the house is so empty during the day, and Stiles is so fucking bored.

Everyone he knows is out having jobs or being at college—or going to kindergarten—and Stiles is trapped in the house with nothing to do except watch TV, check out porn on the internet, and eat Cheetos. And, sure, in theory that sounds like the perfect lifestyle, but Stiles is itching to actually get out of the house and do something. Anything.

Alan Deaton visits every couple of days, but even that’s not as exciting as it should be. Stiles should be in the middle of his emissary training, learning how to use the spark inside him to manipulate the elements and cast wards, but Deaton put a stop to his training once he got pregnant. Something about not wanting to screw around with magic when Stiles’s pregnancy depended on it. Stiles gets that, he supposes. The one thing he’s learned about magic is that everything is balanced. So he doesn’t want to fuck around with it and risk harming the baby. Not that Deaton is sure it would but, as he told Stiles with a smile, there aren’t exactly a lot of case studies on pregnant male sparks. It’s nice to be special.

So now when Deaton visits they do mostly research stuff. It’s okay, but it’s nothing Stiles couldn’t do on his own.

Still, Deaton always brings him curly fries.

So there’s that.

He also examines Stiles every time.

That’s weird, right? Having a vet examine him? Stiles has learned to roll with the punches though.

“So,” he says on a Saturday afternoon, “are my ankles supposed to be swelling up like this?”

“It’s perfectly normal,” Deaton assures him.

Stiles has long ago stopped snickering whenever Deaton says anything about this is normal. The shine has definitely worn off. “Really? Because I’m starting to panic that I won’t be able to wear socks by tomorrow.”

“Your body retains more fluid during pregnancy,” Deaton tells him. “Also, the baby is putting pressure on your pelvic veins, which impairs the flow of blood back to the heart and causes swelling in your extremities. It’s called edema. It’s quite common.”

Stiles leans back in his chair. “Ugh. The sooner this thing is out, the better.”

Deaton almost smiles at that. Coming from him, it might as well be a belly laugh. Deaton is the least emotionally demonstrative person Stiles knows. And Stiles knows Derek. “Not long to go,” he says.

Stiles huffs. “That’s what everyone says.”

When Deaton leaves, Stiles lies on the couch, eats his curly fries, and falls asleep.

***

Stiles has started having nightmares. He hasn’t told Derek. Because they’re dumb, okay? In his nightmares, he’s chained down and there are dark-robed figures, faces covered by hoods, cutting into his abdomen with huge motherfucking knives. And Stiles is screaming at them not to touch his baby, but they keep cutting. The bad guys are from every clichéd horror movie Stiles ever watched as a kid. It’s possible they even chant in backwards Latin. Really, Stiles should be pissed at his subconsciousness’s clear lack of imagination. Usually though, by the time he gasps his way back into wakefulness, Stiles is just too damn relieved the nightmares are over to critique them.

He’s scared, okay?

He’s scared of how the baby is going to come into the world. He’s scared of the Caesarean, even though he knows he shouldn’t be. Deaton and Melissa have it under control, and it’s not like Stiles is any stranger to blood loss, pain, and emergency surgery. It’s a side effect of running with wolves. But for some reason with the baby added to the mix, everything is a million times more terrifying.

Derek doesn’t know the specifics of the nightmares, but every time Stiles jolts awake from one, Derek is there, rubbing soothing circles into his skin and murmuring sleepy sounds of comfort in the darkness.

It’s ridiculous to be scared. Stiles might not have done this before, but Deaton is a vet and Melissa is a nurse, and combined that has to be equal to an obstetrician, right? And then there’s magic. A kickass version of Stiles from an alternate reality made this happen for him and Derek, just like he’d made it happen for him and his alternate version of Derek. This baby might be unchartered territory in this reality, but the fact that Claudie even exists is proof it’s happened before. And if kickass mage Stiles could deliver his baby safety, then of course awkward thought-he-was-channeling-power-once-but-it-turned-out-to-be-indigestion Stiles can do it too. Right?

Right.

Right.

Stiles lies awake trying to shake off the unsettling tendrils of another nightmare, while Derek rubs his thumb over the palm of his hand.

“Three more weeks,” Stiles whispers in the darkness.

Derek shifts closer and places his other hand over Stiles’s belly. “You’ve got this, Stiles.”

“We do,” Stiles corrects, wishing he could shed that fucking dream.

“Yeah, we do,” Derek murmurs.

Stiles waits until Derek falls asleep before he climbs out of bed.

He pads quietly down the hallway and opens the door to the nursery.

Sometimes, when Claudie is asleep and the house is quiet, Stiles likes to let himself into the nursery and turn on the lamp, and just sit. The nursery has been ready for months. The walls are painted yellow, and there’s a Little Red Riding Hood mural opposite the crib. Isaac painted it. He’s totally artistic. A side effect of those pretentious scarves of his, probably. It’s a cute mural. Red and the wolf are holding hands. There’s no blood or creepy sexual overtones anywhere to be found.

Above the crib, the mobile that Stiles bought Claudie is already hanging.

The room is light and airy and perfect.

They never got to do this for Claudie. They never got to prepare for her. She just magically appeared one morning in a cardboard box on the front porch of Stiles’s childhood home.

Cue shenanigans.

When Stiles’s dad finally found out, Stiles and Derek shared custody. Claudie spent half her nights sleeping in a crib beside Stiles’s bed and the other half in a crib in a corner of Derek’s loft. She had to wait until Derek had rebuilt his family’s house before she had a room of her own. In some ways it was good, because she got to choose what she wanted for her own room. But Stiles likes this too. He likes the quiet emptiness of this room. He likes knowing that it’s here, waiting for their baby.

Stiles sits down in the armchair in the corner and rests his hands on his belly. The baby is asleep, he thinks. Do babies sleep in the womb? Does Stiles even have a womb? It’s weird, and Stiles tries not to think much about the actual biology at play here. Hadn’t he told Derek once that he knew where babies came from? And they sure as hell didn’t come from two guys.

Fucking magic.

It’s insane.

But it’s also incredible.

Stiles falls asleep in the armchair, his fingers laced over the baby.

***

“Tata,” Claudie says the next morning, her expression serious. “When is the baby coming?”

“Three weeks,” Stiles tells her. “Well, two weeks and six days.”

Claudie narrows her eyes, and looks pensive. Or evil. It’s hard to tell some days, especially since she’s looking more and more like Derek every passing day. Not that Derek is evil. But he has got the world’s greatest resting bitch face, and even though they’ve been together for three years Stiles still can’t always tell if he’s thinking about what they need to put on the grocery list or plotting the bloodthirsty murder of everyone who has ever wronged him.

“Do I have to like it?” Claudie asks.

Evil. Definitely evil.

“The baby’s part of the pack, Claudie,” Stiles tell her. Every childrearing book he’s read warned him that this would happen. There’s too much of a gap, or not enough of one, or something, and now Claudie is always going to hate the baby and it will be awful and terrible and when they’re adults they’ll never talk, and only get together to scream and fight over the will when Stiles and Derek die.

Derek, who has listened to countless variations on this theory, always just shakes his head and mutters something about how that’s not how it works in werewolf packs, but Stiles thinks he’s just humoring him.

Claudie gives a put-upon sigh. “Well, I’m still going to be the alpha of it!”

“Daddy is the alpha,” Stiles reminds her.

“But I’ll be the alpha after him!” She narrows her eyes. “So the baby is going to have to listen to everything I say!”

“Is that so?”

“Yes!” Claudie juts out her chin stubbornly.

Brattywolf.

Stiles pats her on the head. His sweet, mercenary, ambitious little hellspawn. “Well, maybe my little alpha can help me make some pancakes for Daddy’s breakfast, okay?”

“Daddy says you’re not supposed to do any work.”

Stiles raises his eyebrows. “Really? Well, okay then. Let’s just wait until Daddy wakes up and has a shower and eventually meanders his way downstairs on this glorious lazy Sunday morning, and then maybe he can make the pancakes. I’m sure we won’t have to wait more than an hour or two. Three at the most.”

Claudie races to drag the mixing bowl out.

Stiles grins.

By the time Derek gets downstairs, the pancakes are half eaten.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Stiles screams as the knife slices into him, and wakes up in a panic.

“Derek! Der!”

Stiles reaches out and grabs for him.

He’s not...

His fingers crunch in a pile of leaves.

He’s not in his bed.

He’s...

He forces himself to breathe. Forces himself not to freak out.

He’s outside. It’s the middle of the fucking night, and he’s woken up from a nightmare in the _woods_. Trees loom all around him, branches shifting and moving in the cold night air, and all Stiles can see are the hooded figures from his nightmare, swaying and whispering.

They’re not here though. They’re not _real_.

He covers his mouth as a sob escapes him. His other hand goes straight to his belly, straight to his baby. The baby’s okay. They’re both okay. There was no knife, only a nightmare. Except he just woke up in the fucking woods, and he has no idea how he got here.

He’s cold. His feet hurt. He’s leaning up against the massive stump of some long-dead tree, and he’s terrified. He wants Derek. He wants to call out to him, but he’s too afraid. Because the nightmare still seems too real, and what if there is something out there? And what if it hears him?

Except he’s already yelled out, hasn’t he?

So he has to move.

He has to move now.

It takes a while to haul himself to his feet, one hand shielding his belly, and one clawing at the tree stump to pull himself up. Then he stumbles away from the stump, and where the hell is he anyway? And what if he’s not even going in the right direction and ends up falling headfirst down a gully or something? What if that’s how Derek finds him, days later, with a broken neck and a dead baby inside him?

Stiles sucks in a series of shallow breaths as his panic threatens to overcome him.

Just a dream. Just a stupid fucking scary dream accompanied by some stupid fucking scary sleepwalking. He just needs to get a lid on his panic, figure out where the hell he is, and walk home again.

Easy, right?

Stiles wipes at the tears on his face as he walks.

There is nothing coming after him.

There is nothing to run away from.

Just a nightmare.

Just his pregnancy-addled hormones playing weird fucking Technicolor horror movies in his head. And Stiles knows horror movies okay? He knows that being stuck alone in the woods in the middle of the night is not a good thing, but as long as he doesn’t lose his shit he’ll be fine. He’s the quirky sidekick, right? They don’t die.

Well, not _always_.

Surely not always.

Fuck. Stiles really needs to start watching different movies.

He stumbles along through the Preserve. He’s pretty sure his feet are bleeding, but luckily they’re also so cold he can hardly feel it. It’s November. Stiles and Derek are having a Christmas baby. Well, a December the twelfth baby. Close enough to Christmas that the poor kid’s going to be pissed about getting sandwiched right between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and having his birthday be like an also-ran to the big holidays. Sucks to be him.

 _Him_.   


There’s an ultrasound image stuck on the refrigerator at home where their not-very-shy-at-all little boy is showing himself off in all his glory. Stiles had sort of expected a girl. Because Claudie is a girl, and a part of him wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that they were literally getting Claudie 2.0. That somehow Stiles’s pregnancy would be the same as the mage’s had been, right down to the child it produced. Twin Claudies, four years apart.

It seriously wouldn’t have been the weirdest thing in Stiles’s life.

But the baby is a boy. Stiles and Derek are having a son.

Stiles pictures that ultrasound in his head as he continues through the Preserve. He needs to get home, needs to get warm, needs to keep their son safe.

Except, Jesus fuck, where the hell is he?

Stiles freezes when he hears the howl echoing through the woods.

Freezes, because that’s the sound of a predator.

Then his heart starts beating again and he sobs, this time in relief.

That’s _his_ predator.

“Derek!” he yells into the darkness. “Derek, I’m here!”

 

***

 

Half an hour later he’s wrapped up in a blanket on the couch, a mug of hot herbal tea warming his palms. Derek is crouched on the floor in front of him, inspecting the torn-up soles of his feet.

“I don’t even know what happened,” Stiles says numbly for the thousandth time. “I just woke up there.”

“I’m calling Deaton.”

“Der, it’s like four in the morning.”

Derek fixes him with a narrow stare. “I’m calling Deaton.”

“It was just a nightmare,” Stiles says, with a lot more bravado that he actually feels. “Nightmares aren’t real, Derek.”

Nightmares aren’t real.

 

***

 

Stiles manages to convince Derek to at least wait until morning before calling Deaton. Proper morning, not 4 a.m. morning. What is even the purpose of 4 a.m.? Nobody should be up at that time of the day, not even Beacon Hills expert on the supernatural slash emissary slash vet. Deaton deserves his beauty sleep.

Nevertheless, dawn is only just creeping in when Deaton arrives looking as unruffled as always.

He checks Stiles’s feet first, although Derek did a pretty good job with the antiseptic lotion and bandages.

“So what’s the verdict, doc?” Stiles asks while Derek watches on worriedly. “I should start sleeping in shoes?”

“Well, if this is going to be a regular thing,” Deaton says mildly.

Derek gives an unimpressed growl, but Stiles is pretty sure it was a joke. It’s sometimes hard to tell with Deaton.

Deaton straightens up again. “So, what happened?”

“I don’t know,” Stiles says. “I had a nightmare, and I woke up in the Preserve.”

“He’s been having a lot of nightmares,” Derek says, still growly.

“Is that true?” Deaton asks mildly.

Stiles shrugs. “Yeah. I mean, it’s probably just hormones or something, right?”

Deaton just looks at him. “Tell me about the nightmares.”

“It’s dumb.” Stiles tries to grin, but he has a feeling he misses. “Just the usual run-of-the-mill horror movie bullshit. People wearing hoods, and chanting, and...” He shudders.

Derek is beside him instantly, sitting down and wrapping a strong arm around his shoulders.

“A knife,” Stiles says, turning his face into Derek’s shoulder. “They cut—” Another full body shudder. “They cut the baby out.”

It’s dumb. It’s too dumb to even say aloud, but it doesn’t stop the sudden cold, sick fear from rushing through him all over again.

“Nobody,” Derek growls, “ _nobody_ is going to fucking hurt you or our baby, Stiles.”

“I know,” Stiles says. He grabs a handful of Derek’s shirt and holds it tight in his fist. “I fucking know that, okay? It’s just a nightmare. It’s probably like totally normal, right?”

“Sure,” Derek says, rubbing his back, and Stiles doesn’t need to be a werewolf to hear the lie. “Sure it is.”

“I was so scared though,” Stiles whispers. “God, Der, I was so scared.”

 

***

 

A few hours of sleep and daylight make everything better. Except his bladder. The little guy’s pressing on that so hard that Stiles is surprised he hasn’t wet the bed. He grumbles to himself as he staggers to the bathroom.

“Okay, listen,” he says as he heads downstairs to where Derek is making him a sandwich. Because he’s an excellent provider. Good wolf. “So we all got a little freaked out last night, but I’m okay, and we’re not going to overreact, okay?”

Derek shows him his best bitch face.

“Is that turkey?” Stiles asks.

Derek looks down at the sandwich and nods.

“I hate turkey.”

“You love turkey.”

“Today I hate it,” Stiles decides. “Do we have ham?”

Derek, to his credit, doesn’t even growl as he fetches the ham from the refrigerator.

“Anyway,” Stiles says, picking a piece of turkey off the first sandwich and popping it in his mouth, “I’m sure that Deaton is going to work his emissary mojo and figure out that there’s nothing supernaturally horrible going on, and that everything is just fine and dandy except that I’m subconsciously terrified of the Caesarean, right?”

Derek cuts a slice of ham, and yeah, that blade looks really fucking sharp. “Stiles...”

“And just because I’ve never been a sleepwalker before in my life...well, hey, it’s always healthy to try new things. Also, it’s bonus exercise.”

Derek sets the knife down. His face is serious. It’s usually serious, but now it seems like his normal seriousness met some interesting new seriousness and they got down and dirty and produced a whole new generation of tiny little seriousness. “Stiles.”

“No!” Stiles holds up his hand. “My life is not a horror movie, Derek!”

Derek raises his eyebrows.

“I prefer to think of it as a quirky rom-com,” Stiles says. “Despite the werewolves. Point is, I refuse to entertain even the remotest possibility of the existence of weird hooded cults with knife-wielding baby sacrificers. That’s B-grade bullshit, Der, and I’m disgusted at my own brain for even going there.”

It’s all bluster and deflection. Stiles is actually terrified, and Derek knows it too. But he plays along, because he’s got Stiles’s back. Always.

“I’m quite disappointed in you myself,” he says, quirking a brow. “It’s very cliché.”

“ _So_ cliché,” Stiles agrees. He eats another piece of turkey. “What should I have gone for?”

“Hmm.” Derek layers the newly sliced ham on a fresh piece of bread. “Something with tentacles?”

“Tentacles?”

“You like tentacles,” Derek reminds him.

“Seriously, you find one picture of tentacle porn on my laptop, and suddenly you think I’m a fan?”

“One _folder_ of tentacle porn,” Derek reminds him. “There were a lot of pictures. And many stories. And I know you wrote at least one of them.”

“It was hot though, right?”

Derek’s eyebrows do something complicated. “I’m scared that you’ll embarrass me at an aquarium one day and I’ll have to arrest you.”

Stiles laughs. It feels good. “Don’t worry, big guy. I prefer canines to calamari.”

Derek huffs. “Glad to hear it.” He slides the finished ham sandwich toward Stiles.

“I think I filled up on turkey,” Stiles tells him, but takes the sandwich anyway. Because fuck it, he’s earned it.

 

***

 

Stiles doesn’t hear back from Deaton until the next day. When Deaton finally calls, Stiles is not surprised that he has nothing. Stiles might not be much more than a spark—he’s certainly no mage—but knows magic, okay? He knows what it feels like, and he knows what it smells like. It smells like ozone, like the minute before rain hits a hot, dry road. And there was none of that in the woods the night before.

So it’s not a thing, okay? It’s not a thing.

Stiles pushes it to the back of his mind, and concentrates on the important thing: Thanksgiving. It’s totally crept up on him this year, thanks to the entire magical pregnancy thing, but what with college it’s rare that the entire pack is all in town at the same time, so Stiles is not going to waste the opportunity to throw the best Thanksgiving ever.

In the afternoon, he sits at the kitchen table and plans Thanksgiving for the pack. Probably the only fun thing about being this ridiculously pregnant and ungainly is the fact that nobody expects him to lift a damn finger. All Stiles has to do is go through some recipe books, decide what he wants, and the actual cooking duties will be divided up amongst the pack. Derek is even taking over Stiles’s potato salad duties. Stiles might call it his Adequate Potato Salad, but he secretly knows it’s awesome.

Derek is working, so Stiles’s dad collects Claudie from kindergarten and brings her home.

“Thought I might stay for dinner,” he says. “Pizza?”

“You are the best dad in the world.”

“I know,” John says agreeably, unpacking Claudie’s bag. “Any news from Deaton yet?”

“You’re not subtle, old man.” Stiles closes his recipe book.

“Not trying to be,” John tells him.

Claudie climbs up onto the seat next to Stiles and leans into his hug. She rests her head on his belly, listening to the baby’s heartbeat.

“He says it’s nothing,” Stiles says, which isn’t exactly true though, is it? Deaton said he found nothing, not that it is nothing. But Stiles is going to go with the second option on this. He tugs Claudie’s pigtails gently. “How was kindergarten?”

“I did you a painting but it’s not dry yet so you have to wait until tomorrow.”

“But I don’t want to wait,” Stiles tells her, making a face.

“You’re silly.” She beams at him. She might have looked like Stiles as a baby, but that killer smile is all Derek. “Can we make Thanksgiving decorations now? With leaves we find?”

“Sure, growly girl. Go and find your new jacket though, okay? It’s getting cold out.”

Claudie nuzzles against him for a moment, and then she slides off the chair and scrambles upstairs to go and get her jacket. Stiles listens to her feet thumping on the stairs.

“Did you sleep at all last night?” John asks in a quiet voice.

Stiles drags his fingers through his hair. “Not really. Watched some TV. Did a lot of Googling about the link between pregnancy hormones and nightmares and sleepwalking.”

“And?” John asks.

“And there isn’t one,” Stiles says, quirking his mouth. “Jesus, of course there isn’t.”

“Stress, then,” his dad says.

“Stress,” Stiles echoes back, and meets his dad’s gaze.

“No,” John says firmly, because of course he knows exactly what Stiles is thinking. He knows exactly what he’s afraid of. “Your mom didn’t have bad dreams, Stiles. She had hallucinations. She got to the point where she couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. That is not what’s going on with you.”

“Are you sure?”

His dad reaches across the table and grips his hand tightly. “Stiles, kiddo, I’m _sure_.”

Stiles wishes that he could just shake it off.

Tay-Tay would.  

He swallows. “Yeah I just…” He presses his hands against the baby, and feels him shifting inside. It’s a weird feeling. A bit like nausea, a bit like butterflies, and a lot like something Stiles has never felt before. “I want to be done. I want to hold him so that I can know he’s okay, and that these dreams are all just stupid, and they’re not real, and that I’m panicking about nothing.”

“Oh, kid,” his dad says, and squeezes his hand tighter. He shakes his head ruefully. “Remember last week when your biggest worry was that you were waddling?”

“Ugh,” Stiles says, grimacing. “I _do_ waddle, Dad. Derek says I don’t, but I do.”

“You do a bit,” John says.

“I feel like I used to take a lot of things for granted,” Stiles says. “Like bending down, and tying my shoes. Also, I’m not the most patient person in the world.”

His dad smirks.

“Fine,” Stiles says. “I’m probably the least patient person in the world.”

“There’s a reason I used to have to lock your Christmas presents in the holding cell at work,” his dad agrees. “Listen, kid, I don’t pretend to know what you're going through physically, but I do remember when your mom was pregnant with you, and how much the waiting sucked. But it’s not long to go now.”

“Yeah.” Stiles draws a breath as he hears Claudie thumping down the stairs again. “Want to help me and Claudie pick some pretty leaves to make decorations?”

His dad smiles. “Kid, there’s nothing in the world I’d rather do right now.”

 

***

 

John is working in the morning, but he stays late enough after pizza to help get Claudie ready for bed, and to read her a bedtime story.

Stiles falls asleep on the couch, and wakes up to find the TV show over, his dad and Derek murmuring in low voices in the front hall, and a knitted blanket tucked over him. There’s a cup of herbal tea steaming on the table in front of him.

“Dammit, Der, I want some coffee,” Stiles mutters under his breath.

“No caffeine while you’re pregnant!”

Damn werewolf hearing.

Stiles dozes on the couch for a while, snuffling awake again to find that Derek’s got his feet on his lap, and is massaging his soles. His thumbs make crinkling sounds over the bandages.

“This is nice,” Stiles murmurs.

“Mmmm,” Derek says. “They’re going to kill you.”

Stiles’s blood runs cold. “What did you say?”

“They’re going to kill you,” Derek repeats, rubbing his thumb along the arch of Stiles’s foot. “Peel you open like a husk, and rip that thing right out of you.”

 

***

 

Stiles wakes flailing. His throat is burning like he must have screamed himself hoarse except there’s no sound coming from him. He’s on the couch, and there’s a mug of herbal tea steaming on the coffee table in front of him.

“Hey.” Derek’s suddenly standing in front of the couch. He’s wearing a frown. “Are you okay? Your heartbeat…”

Stiles draws his legs up. “What are they going to do to me, Derek?” he asks, his voice hitching.

“What? Who?” Derek drops down to his haunches, frowning. He searches Stiles’s gaze with his own. Lifts a hand to press against Stiles’s forehead, and freezes when Stiles flinches back.

There’s this look that Derek gets sometimes that just kills Stiles. It’s that one where he thinks he’s a monster and he’s hurt the people he loves. It’s the one where he’s afraid to touch in case he destroys, like the whole world is made of spun glass. It’s the one where he hates himself.

“Your heartbeat,” Derek says, hand trembling. “You’re scared of me.”

“No,” Stiles whispers. He reaches out and grabs Derek’s hand. Holds it to his mouth, and presses his lips to Derek’s knuckles. “Just another stupid dream, okay?”

Derek’s gaze is wide and vulnerable.

“Just a stupid dream,” Stiles murmurs. He tries to smile. “Did my dad go home?”

“Yeah.” Derek cards the fingers of his free hand through Stiles’s hair. “Did you talk to Deaton today?”

“Yeah, and it’s nothing. Not a thing at all. Help me sit up?”

Derek’s werewolf strength has come in extra handy now Stiles feels like he can hardly move. It’s the work of seconds and he’s sitting up, feet on the ground, and Derek’s sitting beside him. Derek puts an arm around his shoulders, and Stiles snuggles close.

“If you really loved me, you’d make me a grilled cheese sandwich.”

“Soon,” Derek promises, and nuzzles his face into the crook of Stiles neck to scent him.

Stiles relaxes into his warmth. “Did you put a bunch of bad guys behind bars today, Der? Or rescue any kitties from trees?”

“I think that’s the fire department’s job, not mine,” Derek says. “Anyway, cats hate me.”

“They really do,” Stiles agrees with a tired grin.

They really, really do. It’s actually hilarious.

Derek shifts so that he can massage the back of Stiles’s neck. “Today I wrote out three traffic tickets, and went to a break and enter, and two noise complaints.”

“It’s a dark criminal underbelly out there in Beacon Hills,” Stiles says.

“The second noise complaint was from the old peoples’ home. It was line dancing night. I will never be able to unsee the things I have seen.”

Stiles laces his fingers over his belly. “Goddamn old people. I’ll bet even the ones with plastic hips can move faster than me right now.”

“Some of them were surprisingly limber.”

“When we’re old, can we take a line dancing class?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

Stiles jabs him in the ribs. “If you loved me, you’d line dance with me when we’re eighty.”

“I’ll divorce you first,” Derek deadpans.

“Harshwolf. I demand a husband who takes me dancing!”

Derek laughs. “Oh, I’ll take you dancing, Stiles. As soon as the baby’s old enough to get a sitter, I’ll take you to The Jungle.”

“Mmm.” Stiles grins. “Will you wear your tightest jeans and grind on me all night? Make all the other boys jealous?”

“Uh huh,” Derek says, taking Stiles’s jaw and gently angling it for a kiss. It’s a soft, sweet kiss, but it makes Stiles shiver. “And then I’ll drag you outside into the alley and shove you up against the wall, drop down onto my knees and blow you so hard you’ll scream.”

Instant boner.

“You dirty fucking tease,” Stiles says, squirming.

“It’s only teasing if I leave you hanging,” Derek says, and then he’s on his knees in front of the couch, easing Stiles’s legs apart and tugging his sweats down.

It’s weird.

Stiles and his body are not friends right now. He can barely even see his dick over his belly. Also, he used to have abs, dammit. But Derek doesn’t seem to care that it’s weird. Just puts one warm, large hand over the baby, and goes to town on Stiles’s dick.

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut and bites his lip. He tangles his fingers in Derek’s hair and tries to pretend that this is going to last longer than thirty seconds. He’s pretty sure it doesn’t. In fact, he’s pretty sure he comes the moment Derek does that incredible thing he does with his tongue. With like the twist?

Talentedwolf.

It’s not until he’s being carried upstairs, blissed out and half-asleep, that Stiles remembers he never got his grilled cheese sandwich.

It doesn’t matter.

Stiles will have his revenge.

He’s totally going to make Derek go line dancing when they’re eighty.


	3. Chapter 3

“Dude!” Scott exclaims, dropping his bags on the floor. “You’re huge!”

“Yeah, thanks, Scotty,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes.

Scott lunges forward and hugs him. “Missed you, bro!”

Stiles hugs him back. “Missed you too.”

Allison and Isaac are next in line for hugs. The three of them drove up from UCLA together. They share an apartment. And, Stiles is almost sure, more than that. But hey, if Scott’s too shy to actually talk about it—and he is, because Stiles has tried—then that’s cool. There were a few times during their last years at high school when Scott and Allison broke up—hunter bullshit, mostly—and Stiles definitely got the vibe that Scott was rebounding with Isaac. But that Allison also was? Anyway, they seem to have figured it out now, whatever the hell it is. Stiles just wishes it was out in the open because he’d love to see the look on Chris Argent’s face. Not just one werewolf, but _two_?

“How was the drive?” Stiles asks as Isaac hauls their luggage upstairs.

“Good,” Scott says, letting him go at last. He’s grinning. “Wow, dude. I just can’t get over how big you’ve gotten!”

“Two weeks and three days,” Stiles says, rubbing his belly. “And then I’ll actually be able to see my dick again.”

It’s fun when Scott doesn’t know what to say.

“So, Erica and Boyd are getting here tonight as well. How does board games and pizza sound? And a good old fashioned puppy pile?”

Scott beams. “It sounds great!”

The weird thing is that they aren’t exactly a pack. Well, they are. They’re _two_ packs, really, with two alphas. And all the lore in the world says something like that shouldn’t work. But fuck tradition. Stiles wasn’t going to chose between Derek and Scott, so why should anyone else have to? Admittedly, on paper, Derek is the better alpha. He has actual wolves, for starters. He bit Isaac and Erica and Boyd, and turned them. All Scott brought to the table, pack-wise, was Stiles and Allison and Lydia. A human, a human hunter, and a banshee. But hey, it works for them.

It was actually Claudie’s arrival that started to really break down the division between them. That, and the fact that Stiles learned that in the alternate universe they were a single pack. So when Scott presented as an alpha as well, it never even occurred to him that anything apart from sticking together was an option. The Hale Pack is now the Hale-McCall Pack, with two alphas and a bunch of non-wolves, and it works. Other werewolves might totally give them the side eye for it, but fuck them, right? Stiles is all about being non-traditional. And that was even before he married another guy. And produced a nuclear family. Sometimes Stiles thinks he’s been so non-traditional that he’s come full circle.

“Derek?” he’d asked one night a few months ago. “Are we too heteronormative?”

“Go to sleep, Stiles, before I smother you with my pillow.”

Good talk.

Stiles thinks about following Scott upstairs, but decides against it. Too much effort. He goes and eases himself down onto the couch in the living room instead. Scott finds him there after a few minutes.

“Where’s Derek?”

“Him and Claude are picking up some stuff in town,” Stiles says.

Scott’s brow creases. “He left you alone?”

“Uh, yeah?” Stiles rolls his eyes. “I’m nineteen, Scotty, not six. Pretty sure I won’t burn the house down while he’s gone.”

Scott’s answering smile is a little off.

Great.

 _Great_.

So Derek’s told him about the nightmares and the sleepwalking incident. Remember those times when Derek wouldn’t have crossed the street to piss on Scott if he were on fire? And vice versa? Good times. Good, happy times.

“I don’t need a babysitter, Scott,” Stiles says firmly.

“Okay,” Scott says. “Okay.”

Great.

And now it’s awkward.

 

***

 

Erica bursts into the house like a hurricane, squealing when she sees Stiles for the first time in weeks. Yes, he’s huge now. Yes, it’s hilarious. Yes, ha fucking ha.

Boyd is much more sedate. He just claps Stiles on the shoulder, and smiles.

There should be more Boyds in the world.

Pizza and pack night is a success.

Monopoly, less so.

Stiles is a Monopoly god, okay? And fuck everyone else for getting bored and throwing the towel in before he can grind them into worthless bankrupt dust.

The puppy pile though, was worth waiting for.

Lydia arrives halfway through. She leans in the doorway and arches a brow at everyone. “Oh, you’re still doing this?”

“Get over here, Lyds,” Stiles tells her.

“Don’t call me Lyds.” But she squeezes in on the edge of the pile, and lets Stiles smell her hair.

Not that he’s a wolf or anything, but Lydia’s hair just always smells nice, okay? And a part of Stiles has never really gotten over that massive crush he had on her for like forever. Why would he get over it? She’s a fucking goddess.

These are the moments Stiles loves the best. These are the moments he lives for. The pack is here, and everyone is warm and safe and happy, and this is what he wants his entire life to be. Just this. Pack.

“I love you guys,” he says.

Claudie squirms up between him and Lydia.

“And I love you most of all,” he tells her, smiling at Derek over her head when she nuzzles into his throat.

 

***

 

Awake.

He’s awake.

His hands are wet.

He’s sitting in the dark, and his hands are wet.

Where…

“Stiles?”

Light floods the room, and Stiles twists around to see Derek in the doorway. His face is slack with sleep, but his expression sharpens as he takes in the room. His eyes flash red.

“Stiles!”

Stiles looks down at his hands.

Paint. Is that paint? Why is there paint on his hands?

He blinks.

He’s in the nursery.

His breath catches when he sees it.

Isaac’s Little Red mural. It’s gone. Red and the wolf have vanished.

There’s a tree there now. A big, black tree with naked branches twisting like barbed wire. It’s stark and ugly, like a jagged scar.

“Der?” There’s black paint on his hands, on his sleep pants, on the floor. “Der, what—”

 _What did I_ do _?_

 

***

 

“I’m okay,” Stiles says, his hand slipping on the tap as he twists it on. “I’m _okay_.”

Derek is standing close—too close, almost. Stiles isn’t sure he wants to be touched right now. He’s afraid that if Derek touches him he’ll break into a million pieces. He shoves his hands under the flow of water, and rubs his shaking hands together to get the paint off them.

God. It’s the middle of the night, and Stiles is getting really sick of this shit. He digs the paint out from underneath his nails, and tries not to think about how he’s ruined the mural that Isaac painted for the baby. Yet, at the same time that’s _exactly_ what he wants to focus on because the alternatives—that he’s being fucked over by the supernatural yet again, or showing symptoms of the same illness that killed his mother—are much, much worse.

Stiles lifts his gaze and meets Derek’s in the mirror. “My mom hallucinated, my dad says, which isn’t what’s going on with me.”

“No,” Derek agrees in a soft voice.

He remembers the way his dad sat him down when he was eight, and tried to explain what was happening with Mom. How she was sick—Stiles knew that, okay? He wasn’t stupid—but how it wasn’t like that time that Mrs. Lindermeyer got sick and died…

So Mom wasn’t going to die?

Even now it makes him want to cry. The way his dad’s face had just crumpled when he’d asked.  

 _“No, Stiles. Jesus. I—your mom_ is _going to die.”_

What he’d meant was it would be different. What he’d meant was her mind would go before the rest of her did, and sometimes she would look at Stiles and think he was a tiny little baby again, and sometimes she wouldn’t know who he was and ask him what he was doing in her room, and other times…other times she would scream at someone to help her because she thought that Stiles was trying to kill her.

Stiles loved his mom. But the woman lying in that hospital bed, she wasn’t his mom. She was the monster who stole his mom.

That can’t happen to Stiles.

He can’t do that to Claudie.

Stiles twists the tap off and grips the edge of the sink. The porcelain is cold.

“Stiles.” Derek moves in close behind him, and puts his hands on his hips. Meets his gaze in the mirror again. “We need to talk about this.”

“What’s to talk about?” Stiles’s voice sounds rough to his own ears. “Either it’s supernatural, and I’m fucked, or it’s medical, and I’m also fucked.”

“Or it’s stress, like your dad said.”

“Yeah.” Stiles swallows. “And what do you think the chances of that are, really?”

He sees his own fear reflected in Derek’s eyes, and almost wants to laugh. Fucking Beacon Hills. Seriously. It’s always the worst-case scenario, isn’t it?

“Look,” he says. “The pack’s all here, right? So nothing is going to happen to me or the baby. I know you guys won’t let anything happen. I _know_ that. And even though Deaton hasn’t found anything yet, I know he’ll keep looking. In the meantime, I’ll talk to Melissa. See about scheduling an MRI as soon as this little guy is out of me.”

“Okay,” Derek says. He looks younger than he is, like this. Vulnerable. Afraid. It softens all the sharper edges of him and washes away the years.

Stiles turns around and reaches up to cup Derek’s face in his damp hands. It’s sometimes easy to forget that even though Derek is six years older than he is, those six years brought him nothing but hell where he was destroyed over and over again. It’s a miracle, Stiles knows, that Derek ever dared open his heart to anyone or anything again. To Claudie first, and then to Stiles, and now to family, and to a future, and to a life outside running and fighting.

Stiles might be the weak and fragile human in this equation, but he has to protect Derek too. Protect his secret heart.

“You are the best thing that ever happened in my life,” he says. “You, and Claudie, and our baby. I don’t know what’s going on right now, but I promise you this. Whatever it is, I’m not going down without a fight, Der. You are my family, and nothing in the universe is allowed to fuck with that, okay?”

Derek nods, eyes shining with tears. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, more firmly this time. “Because I fucking run with _wolves_.”

“Yeah,” Derek says. “You do.”

“We’ve got this,” Stiles tells him fiercely. “You and me, Der, we’ve got this.”

 

***

 

Stiles wakes the next morning to the murmur of voices down the hall. He climbs out of bed and runs a hand through his hair then, yawning, heads to the nursery to see what’s going on. He finds Isaac and Scott with paintbrushes at the ready.

“Hey,” he says. “Sorry about the…whatever the hell that is.”

Isaac offers him a tentative smile. “It’s okay. I wasn’t happy with some of it anyway.”

“Dude, it was perfect,” Stiles says.

“Well, this time it’s going to be better than perfect,” Scott says staunchly. “Don’t worry about it.”

Easier said than done. Whatever the hell is going on, Stiles knows it’s going to take more than repainting the mural to fix it.

“Before you paint over it, take a picture of it, okay?” Stiles says. “For Deaton.”

“Already done it,” Scott says. “And, Stiles?”

“Yeah?”

“We’ll figure it out, okay?”

“Thanks, Scotty.”

Stiles heads downstairs. It’s not until he reaches the kitchen and sees the absolute chaos there that he remembers: it’s Thanksgiving. And there are way too many people trying to claim space to work in the kitchen. Stiles sneaks an apple from the bowl on the bench and moves as fast as he can—which is not very fast at all—out onto the front porch to eat it.

Last summer Derek put a hammock up on the porch. Stiles inspects it carefully. Okay, so he’ll be able to get into it no problems. Gravity will do most of the work for him. Getting out might be trickier, but with a house full of werewolves somebody will be able to lift him, right?

The hammock it is.

He manages to clamber in kind of face-first, beaching himself like a whale. Getting over onto his back is a whole other thing, and by the time he’s staring up at the porch ceiling, still swinging a little wildly from his frenzied efforts to turn over, he feels like he’s back at high school and Finstock has just made him do a whole bunch of suicide runs.

It takes a long time for his heart to stop racing.

Claudie finds him just as he’s drifting off to sleep, and climbs into the hammock with him. She’s warm and cuddly, and presses a kiss to his cheek as she snuggles up beside him.

God, how is it that she’s already four? Stiles can still remember the day he found her. Still remember how he’d freaked the hell out when hot, terrifying Derek Hale had snarled that she was _theirs_. In some ways Stiles has done a lot of growing up since then, but a part of him thinks he’ll always be that scrawny, ridiculous kid at heart, whose greatest joys in life were Froot Loops, cheesy disco tunes, and masturbation.

Really, though, all three of those things are still awesome.

“Happy Thanksgiving, Claudie.”

Claudie fixes him with the serious stare she stole from Derek. “Aunt Lydia says that the pilgrims were dicks.”

“Aunt Lydia should watch her mouth around little wolves with big ears,” Stiles says. “But she’s totally right.”

Stiles lazes in the hammock for most of the day, listening to the sounds of the pack from inside the house. Claudie eventually gets bored and goes off to find trouble, and it doesn’t escape Stiles’s attention that he’s never left alone. There’s always someone there with him: Boyd reading a book on the porch steps, Erica claiming there’s no room in the kitchen and bringing out a whole bucket of potatoes to peel, Lydia choosing the front porch to reapply her nail polish…always someone.

And Derek.

Derek is always there to help him out of the hammock when he needs to go to the bathroom, to help him back into it when he’s done, and to card his fingers through his hair when he starts to doze off.

There are no more nightmares today.

Stiles finally decides that he should have a shower some time before dinner, and try to look at least a little bit presentable. He even combs his hair after his shower and puts some gel in it, so he doesn’t look too terrible if his dad insists on getting the camera out.

His dad and Melissa arrive just before dinner. They both had morning shifts, at the station and the hospital respectively. Stiles knows his dad didn’t have to work today—he’s the Sheriff, he’s in charge of the roster—but he has a feeling that his dad did it so that Derek could have the day off.

Deaton arrives a few minutes later. So does Chris Argent. That’s a little surprising, to be honest. Stiles invited him because Allison is his only remaining family, but he didn’t actually expect the hunter to walk right into the wolves’ den. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, but totally worth it to see the looks on Scott and Isaac’s faces.

_Yes, guys. The man whose daughter you’re regularly violating knows a thousand different ways to kill you with just a dessert spoon._

But what would Thanksgiving be without people who secretly hate each other being forced to play nice over the potato salad?

“So, who do you like for the Super Bowl?” Boyd asks Chris Argent mildly, and it’s so hilarious that Stiles has to pretend that he’s choking on a piece of lettuce, not laughing.

Stiles eats way too much and gets indigestion. He has to stand up and do painstakingly slow laps around the dining table until the pain eases. Damn baby, taking up all his valuable turkey space. Then he sits back down and eats another sliver of pie, just to prove he’s the boss.

After dinner, Stiles insists on playing Pictionary.

He and his dad always used to play Pictionary at Thanksgiving, and dragged Melissa and Scott in as well. It’s a Stilinski/McCall tradition, and it’s going to be a pack tradition too, dammit. Derek, naturally, hates the idea. He also naturally agrees to go along with it because it’s what Stiles wants. Stiles is so glad that Derek’s the one in their relationship who actually knows how to compromise. And, by compromise, Stiles means folds like a cheap suit. It works for Stiles.

Chris Argent looks like he’d rather volunteer for an extended bout of medieval dentistry than play Pictionary, but Allison bullies him into it.

It’s fun, and stupid and ridiculous, and the entire house is filled with laughter. When it’s Stiles’s turn to draw, he gets _Titanic_.

“Oh, man, this is a piece of cake,” he says. “Not literally. It actually has nothing to do with cake. It’s actually a movie.”

Isaac boos him for cheating.

It’s easy to draw. Some waves, an iceberg, and a big ass ship.

“Christmas!” Erica shouts. “It’s a Christmas movie!”

“What? No!” Stiles gives her a look and jabs the pen at the iceberg. “How is that Christmas?”

“ _Into the Woods_?” Boyd asks, frowning.

“No, come on, you guys!”

“Groot!” Lydia yells out. “ _Guardians of the Galaxy_!”

“No!” Stiles yells back, and looks at the board again. “That’s not—”

There is something very wrong here. Something that he’s literally not seeing.

He’s aware of Derek stalking toward him.

He’s aware of the look Scott’s giving him, like he’s terrified.

He’s aware of Deaton staring at the board, his brow furrowed.

Derek reaches him and takes the pen off him.

“It’s _Titanic_!” Stiles manages, his voice cracking. “It’s obviously fucking _Titanic_!”

“Stiles,” Derek says in a tone that can’t quite cover his worry.

Stiles twists free of him and stares at the board. He sees waves, and an iceberg, and a ship. “What’d I draw, Derek? What did I draw?”

“A tree,” Derek tells him, his breath hitching. “You drew a tree.”

So much for fucking Pictionary.

 

***

 

Melissa and Deaton check his blood pressure and get him settled in bed. Then Melissa sits down beside him and smooths his hair, like his mom used to when he was sick.

“Okay, sweetheart,” she says. “We’re going to get you into surgery tomorrow, okay? And get you into an MRI the day after.”

“Okay.” Stiles feels numb. He lifts his gaze to Deaton’s. “Now would be a really good time to tell me this is magic.”

Not for the first time, Stiles wonder what deals the mage had to make with the universe for Claudie to happen. What rules he broke, what darkness he courted. Everything is balance. What did he have to sacrifice to get Claudie? And what cosmic fucking debt is Stiles accruing now to give her a brother?

Is that what’s happening here?

“I’m sorry, Stiles,” Deaton says. “I don’t know what this is, and I certainly don’t want to discount a medical reason given your family history.”

Because it’s not just dreams now, is it? It’s hallucinations.

“Try and get some sleep,” Melissa tells him. She leans down and kisses his forehead, and Stiles misses his mom so much that it _hurts_.

They leave him.

A moment later, Claudie slips inside the room. She’s trailing her blankie in one hand, and her new Stella McCartney skirt in the other. A present from Aunt Lydia, naturally. Claudie likes it so much she’s been carrying it around like a teddy bear. She climbs up into the bed beside Stiles, and burrows into his side.

Derek joins them shortly afterward.

“It’s gonna be okay, Stiles.”

Stiles rests his head on Derek’s shoulder, and wishes he could believe that. Derek traces warm circles on his back until he falls asleep.

 

***

 

He dreams of a tree so large its roots clench into the heart of the earth, squeezing it until it bursts. When he wakes up, panic ripping through him, the house is deathly quiet.  


	4. Chapter 4

 

“Derek? Claudie?” Stiles pushes himself up onto his elbow. Derek is lying on his back, his eyes closed, his mouth open. Claudie is curled into his side. “Derek?”

Stiles nudges Derek with the heel of his hand. Nothing.

“Wake up, Der. Wake up!”

He pushes harder. Still nothing.

The house is quiet.

It must be the middle of the night, but with the entire pack here, the house shouldn’t be quiet. And even if nobody is still wandering around, or watching TV downstairs, or flushing a toilet, the house is never quiet. It creaks and groans as the temperature falls during the night. That one branch that Derek keeps promising to cut back taps against the back wall when the wind gets up. And the clock in the kitchen sounds as loud as a kettledrum when the rest of the house is silent. But tonight there’s _nothing_.

Derek and Claudie aren’t moving.

Stiles lifts his shaking hand and presses it against Claudie’s chest. Feels her thumping heartbeat.

“Claudie? Claudie, sweetheart?” He shakes her gently, but her eyes stay closed. He grips Derek’s shoulder and digs his fingers in. “Derek? Der?”

Stiles bites back a panicked sob.

Why won’t they wake up? Or is Stiles the one asleep? This could be another dream, or a hallucination. It feels real, but what the fuck does know? He’s hardly a reliable judge right now, is he?

He hauls himself up from the bed, and stumbles into the hallway.

If he can’t wake Derek, then he needs to get to Scott. Not just because Scott is his best bro, but because Scott is an alpha too, and whatever is going on here, every instinct in Stiles is telling him that he needs the protection of an alpha. He passes Boyd and Erica’s guest room. Passes Lydia’s, and then Isaac’s. Pushes open the door at the end of the hall.

He totally fucking knew it—unless he’s dreaming—but he totally fucking knew it. Isaac’s in bed with Scott and Allison. Scott’s actually in the middle. He’s cuddling Allison while Isaac spoons him from behind.

“Totally knew it, bro,” Stiles whispers. A sound escapes him that is half a choked cry and half a crazy laugh, because this is terrifying, and absurd —Scott is in a goddamned poly relationship and that’s what he’s focussing on?—and he can’t even begin to process everything that’s rushing though his head right now. He leans over Isaac to touch Scott’s shoulder. “Scotty. Wake up. Please, Scotty.”

Scott doesn’t open his eyes.

“Isaac? Ally?” Stiles shakes both of them, and jabs a finger in Isaac’s ribs.

Nothing.

He wonders if he’s as insubstantial as a ghost. Wonders if he’s even awake here, even alive. He doesn’t want this moment to be real, but if it’s a dream he’s not waking up. And he’s _aware_ this could be a dream, and that spark of awareness actually makes him think that it’s not. He never even questioned if it was real or not it every other time he dreamed. No room for ontological considerations in the middle of a nightmare, right? Yet here’s Stiles now, wondering what’s real, what’s a dream, and if thought itself is enough to constitute existence.

He doesn’t check Boyd and Erica’s room. Doesn’t check Lydia’s. He doesn’t need to.

He heads downstairs, dragging his fingertips against the wall.

He picked this paint with Derek.

 _“White,”_ Derek had said when Stiles had asked him what color they were going to paint the walls.

_“But what sort of white, Der? Cotton, or ivory, or pearl? No, forget pearl. Or something with a bit more color in it? Ecru? Oooh, wait. What about white, but with just a bit of eggshell blue in it?_

_“What?”_

_“White’s stark,”_ Stiles had told him. _“But it’s also kind of flat. We need something with a bit of color in it to lift it. And, holy shit, how do I even know this stuff? I am unstoppable! Adulting, Der, doin’ it right!”_

Derek had laughed.

Stiles’s breath hitches.

This is his house. This is his _home_ , and nightmares don’t belong here.

There’s a faint light coming from the living room, like the low glow from a television screen. It’s green. Of course it’s green. And the cold air smells faintly like rain.

Stiles pushes open the door.

There’s a boy standing in front of the Pictionary board, his back to Stiles. He’s bathed in soft green light. He turns when Stiles steps into the room, and Stiles sees the same face that stares out at him from the bathroom mirror every morning when he shaves. The same face, but a few years younger. A little unfinished around the edges maybe. He’s thinner than Stiles as well, a bit shorter. He still wears his hair in the buzz cut Stiles did when he was sixteen. The same buzz cut he had when Stiles last saw him, covered in burns and dying in his childhood bedroom.

“You’re dead,” he says.

The mage nods, eyes wide and curious.

“You’re not here,” Stiles tells him.

“Dude, I’m totally your spirit animal,” the mage grins.

“What?”

“Your spark,” the mage tells him. “This is what it looks like to you.”

“So you _are_ dead?”

“Yep.”

“And I’m talking to myself?”

The mage hums sympathetically. “Seems like it.” He nods at the board. “Nice tree.”

Stiles can see it now. He can see what he drew. He can see the branches twisting on the page. See the thick trunk, and the grasping roots.

“I don’t even know why Erica said Christmas,” the mage comments. “No fucking way does that look like a Christmas tree.”

“What sort of tree does it look like?” Stiles asks.

“A very old tree.” The mage tilts his head curiously. “The _first_ tree.”

And suddenly Stiles remembers. He remembers seeing this in one of Deaton’s books. But he also remembers it from so many other places. Old myths, paintings on temple walls, tattoos, jewellery, religion, and fiction and folktales and songs. It’s as ancient as creation. He remembers what it was called in Deaton’s book.

“There’s no Nemeton in Beacon Hills,” he says. He steps closer to the board, and reaches out to brush his fingers against the branches he drew, the ends as thin as the blades of knives. “Why would it be a Nemeton? Maybe I’m just expressing an unconscious Jungian archetype or something. Tree, life, _baby_ , you know.”

Except it’s not a _nice_ tree that he painted, is it? Hell no. That’s a scary ass tree.

The mage’s mouth quirks in a quick smile, and he shrugs his skinny shoulders.

Stiles has filled out a lot since he was sixteen.

“Okay,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Okay, so I know there are myths and lore that all bleed into one another. Tree of Life, Tree of Knowledge. Even Gilgamesh was looking for a tree, right? And let’s not pretend that Jesus was the first god to die nailed to one. The tree is an incredibly powerful symbol, whether it’s benevolent or malignant. And it’s the oldest trinity, right? It exists in three worlds. Its roots are in the underworld, its trunk is in our world, and its branches are in the heavens.” He scowls at the tree he drew. “So is this a good tree or a bad tree, and why is it fucking with me?”

The mage has the same expectant light in his eyes that Deaton gets whenever Stiles starts to ramble like this. Deaton uses a twist on the Socratic Method. Instead of asking questions, Deaton throws a skerrick of information out there and waits patiently while Stiles’s brain makes a thousand different and random connections before, suddenly—and sometimes totally accidentally—he finds the truth.

“There is no Nemeton in Beacon Hills,” Stiles says slowly, “but there _was_.” He remembers waking up on that massive dead stump in the middle of the Preserve. Stiles calls bullshit on that being a coincidence. “There _was_ , and maybe it’s not as dead as everyone thinks. No evil fucking tree is getting my baby!”

“A Nemeton is neither benevolent nor malignant,” the mage says. “A Nemeton is benign.”

Stiles raises his brows. “Funny, but you only really hear that word in relation to cancer.”

The mage inclines his head. “True.”

“Except when I woke up in the woods, I didn’t smell magic.” Stiles rubs his belly. The baby is the only one awake tonight, apparently. “So it must be dead, right? The stump? Except tonight I smell magic, and you’re here even though you say you aren’t. So where’s the magic from if it’s not from the tree?”

The mage shrugs again.

“Or maybe nothing makes sense because it’s all in my head. It’s my brain literally fucking shutting down. Do I…” Stiles swallows and regroups before he can force the question out.  “Do I have frontotemperal dementia?”

“I’m not like _real_ , dude,” the mage tells him, his tone softening. “I can’t actually answer questions you don’t already know the answer to.”

Stiles meets his gaze. “Do I know if I’m dreaming right now?”

The mage is silent for a moment. Then he wrinkles his nose. “No fucking idea.”

“You’re not a lot of help, are you?”

The mage scrubs his hand over his buzz cut. “I’m an untapped spark, dude. What the hell were you expecting?”

The kid who was so fucking magical he ripped a hole in time and space to save his infant daughter? The totally badass mage who said _fuck it_ to the laws of nature to produce his daughter in the first place? Stiles would really love that guy on his side right now. Not this… approximation. This hollow sounding board for his subconscious, or his spark, or whatever the hell this is.

The mage flashes him a sympathetic smile.

“Okay.” Stiles stares at the drawing of the tree a moment longer. “Do I know why everyone won’t wake up?”

“Mmm.” The mage shoves his hands in the pockets of his skinny jeans. “Yeah. Yeah, I think you do.”

Stiles’s blood runs cold.

 

***

 

When he was seven, Stiles stayed up and watched a slasher movie. He shouldn’t have, but his mom was in the hospital and his dad had worked a double shift and kind of crashed out the second he got home, and nobody was there to tell Stiles to go to bed. So he didn’t. Maybe he was feeling rebellious, or maybe he wanted desperately to feel like a grown up, whatever. He doesn’t remember now why it seemed so important to prove to himself that he wasn’t too much of a baby to watch a scary movie, only it turned out that he was. He’d even made himself popcorn, but he'd been too terrified to eat it.

He doesn’t even remember now what the movie was called, or what it was even about, except basically this family was in this holiday house by a lake, and this crazy guy stalked them one by one and killed them all. Like, thinking back it was probably ludicrous. Stiles is pretty sure the dad bought it when the killer strung him up with Christmas lights and jabbed the star from the tree so far into his eye that it went into his brain. 

Fucking trees again, right?

Anyway, if he saw that movie now he’d probably laugh himself stupid.

But the thing he remembers most is the two littlest kids in their room, and how the killer came in and cut one up while the other one lay still and pretended to be asleep.

“Don’t move,” Stiles had whispered to the kid. “Don’t move, and stay asleep, and he won’t see you! If you don’t move, he can’t get you!”

It was childish logic—of course the killer got the second kid as well—but for some reason Stiles had really thought it was true: if you didn’t move, if you lay there with your eyes closed, if you didn’t snag the killer’s attention then he would pass right by. When Stiles was seven, he’d thought that if you didn’t look evil in the eye then it couldn’t see you either.

And maybe some dumb part of him still thinks that.

 

***

 

His own panicked breath is as loud as the roar of the ocean in his skull, or the barrage of distant artillery. Weird that he can hear it, because a part of him thinks he’s not breathing at all. He can’t be, because his chest is tight and his vision is going gray at the edges.

“I…” He sucks in another thunderous breath. “I didn’t do this. I _couldn’t_.”

He’s a spark, sure, but he hasn’t trained in months, and even when he was training he wasn’t exactly powerful. Once he thought he made a candle go out with just the power of his mind but later, when he was a little less high on the thrill of his own magic awesomeness, he decided he might have just breathed on it too heavily.

The mage’s expression is grave.

“I couldn’t do this,” Stiles says, his heart beating too fast. “But even if I somehow did, then _why_?”

“You know why,” the mage whispers.

And Stiles does.

“Because they’re coming for me.”

The mage’s face is illuminated with light, and for a second Stiles doesn’t realize where it’s coming from. Then he hears the sound of an engine, and of tires crunching on gravel.

Headlights.

There’s someone here.

The mage flickers like a guttering candle, and vanishes, and Stiles is alone.

They’re not just coming for him.

They’ve arrived.

 

***

 

The faces of his nightmares look so prosaic. So ordinary and everyday. There are three of them, two men and a woman. Ordinary, bland people with normal faces. They’re the sort of people Stiles might pass on the street, or in the aisles of the grocery store, or in the park on a Saturday morning.

They’re fucking terrifying.

Stiles stumbles up the stairs. “Don’t! Don’t you fucking come near me! Don’t you hurt my baby!”

They follow him.

“Derek!” Stiles screams. “Derek!”

He shoves open the door to his bedroom. Derek and Claudie are still curled together, still asleep.

“Derek! Derek, please!”

The three strangers watch from the doorway. They’re not even wearing robes and hoods. Just jeans and button-down shirts, like they’re on their way to a PTA meeting instead of _this_.

“Derek!” Stiles shakes him roughly, but Derek doesn’t even flinch. “Derek, you said you wouldn’t let them hurt us!”

The woman steps forward into the bedroom and flicks the light on.

“Don’t,” Stiles says, hunching over and wrapping his arms across his belly. He’s crying. It’s not fair. If he did this to Derek and the others, where’s his fucking magic now? “Stay away from me!”

The woman smiles at him. It’s almost a kind smile. It’s fucking perverse. “Come quietly,” she says, “and we’ll leave your daughter here.”

Stiles’s blood turns to ice.

 _Claudie_.

_Stay asleep, baby. Stay asleep, my growly girl. Don’t wake up. Don’t look at them. Don’t see._

“Oh, god. God.” Stiles can’t breathe. He leans over the bed and presses a kiss to Claudie’s forehead. Leaves tears on her little face. “I love you, Claudie. Tata loves you.” Then he presses his shaking hand against Derek’s cheek. “Der.”

_My wolf._

_My everything._

_Love you._

_Whatever happens, that will always be true._

He’s screaming again by the time they take him.

 

***

 

What sort of evil cult members drive a fucking Hyundai?

 

***

 

_Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved a wolf._

Stiles blinks, and tears cloud his vision. Again.

_Once upon a time…_

He presses his hands against the baby, and stares out the window as the dark trees flash past.

_Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved a wolf._

_Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved a wolf so much they made something magical._

The man sitting in the back seat with him reaches over and takes his arm. Pulls it out straight, and Stiles flinches at the sudden, sharp pain. He looks down just in time to see the man press the plunger on the syringe. He closes his eyes and fights the urge to be sick.

“You want to wake the Nemeton,” he says, eyes still closed. His voice is raw.

They don’t answer him.

They just turn the radio up.

Fucking jazz.

The last song Stiles ever hears is going to be fucking jazz.

 

***

 

Awake.

He’s still wearing the track pants he fell asleep in last night, and one of Derek’s oldest stretchiest shirts. Stiles feels frantically for the baby. He’s still there, his heart still beating. Stiles can feel the shape of him underneath his skin. The hard bump of an elbow or a foot. The weight of him pressing on his bladder, like always.

The baby’s still there.

He’s not in the woods this time.

He’s not in the house.

He’s in a dark room. A small, dark room that smells of mildew and decay. There’s no window. Only a thin chink of light coming from underneath a steel door. Brick walls and a steel door. And nothing in the room apart from the narrow cot Stiles is lying on, and a bucket.

In the dim light, Stiles can make out something on the walls. Graffiti? Except it’s not. Stiles doesn’t recognize the runes, but he recognizes their purpose: they’re magical. Either designed to keep him in here, or to keep him from being located. Both, probably. It’s what he’d do, if he was in some evil fucking cult determined to kidnap a pregnant spark.

Stiles is awake, but, Jesus, he wishes he wasn’t.

He sits up slowly, wincing at the squeal of the bedsprings underneath the thin mattress.

“Once upon a time,” he whispers to the baby, “a boy loved a wolf.”

There should be more to that story, he thinks. There should be a happy ending. It’s a fairytale he should tell to a baby he can see, can touch, to a pair of clear eyes and a little mouth screwed up into a smile. It’s a story he should tell while he pinches tiny toes to hear a giggle.

Today Deaton and Melissa were going to do the Caesarean.

Today he was supposed to hold his baby for the first time.

It’s not a story that should end like this.

No story should end like this.

 

***

 

Nobody comes to gloat or chant or whatever Stiles was expecting them to do.

He can’t hear anything outside at all.

Maybe his nightmares weren’t accurate at all. Maybe they’re going to starve him to death. He’ll probably die of thirst first, right?

 

***

 

Fear is a weird thing. It ebbs and flows like the tide. Sometimes even boredom trumps it. Anger certainly does.

“Hey!” Stiles yells, banging his fist on the steel door. “Hey, I’m fucking _thirsty_!”

But nobody comes.

 

***

 

“Sorry, baby,” Stiles says later. Minutes, hours, he’s not even sure. He’s lying on the bed again, rubbing his belly. “There was so much we were going to do together.”

So much.

 

***

 

It’s dark. Maybe it’s night again, or maybe they’ve just turned off the light outside.

Stiles is hungry, and thirsty, and he’s cold. He’s so cold. There’s no blanket on the bed. He curls up as much as he can, and shivers in the dark.

“Conor,” Stiles whispers to the baby. “Your name was going to be Conor, and you were going to be so happy.”

His tears dry on his cheeks, as cold as ice.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Stiles lies on the bed, blinking at the runes painted on the walls. He recognizes some of them, but not in this configuration. Stiles shivers. When he blinks, his vision clouds. He can’t read the runes. He thinks they’re Younger Futhark, but he can’t be sure. The thing with lore is that there’s so much to learn. It’s not how it is in movies, where everything’s conveniently located in one neatly written book. Magic is… magic is a patchwork, a hodgepodge, a cluster fuck. It takes bits and pieces from different cultures, different languages, different traditions, and throws them all in together. The research nerd inside Stiles loves unpicking the different threads to see where they came from, but it also feels like he’ll never actually know enough to master even a tiny little corner of that world.

Well, that’s a given now. He’ll be dead in a day or two, right? And he won’t even have figured out if this is Younger Futhark or Elder Futhark.

“If high on a tree, I see a hanged man swing,” he whispers to the baby, “so do I write and color the runes, that forth he fares, and to me talks.”

Cheery fucking bunch, those Vikings.

Also, more trees, right?

Stiles closes his eyes and tries not to think about how thirsty he is, and what that’s doing to the baby. He knows that if they don’t give him water he’ll die in a few days, but what about the baby? Will he die first? If he does, will Stiles feel it?

It would be better if—

There is no good way to finish that sentence, even in his head.

He doesn’t want his baby to die before he’s even born.

He also doesn’t want his baby to outlive him, and be left in the hands of these evil fuckers. Because Stiles has no doubt that they’re going to hurt his child. Sacrifice him to whatever fucking evil bullshit they’re trying to pull.

“You know what?” he whispers. “You know what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna believe that your daddy is coming to get us. We’re gonna believe that there’s no power in the universe that can stop him. These assholes have magic? Well, I bet they’ve never seen a really pissed off alpha wolf before.”

He dozes, or maybe passes out. Same difference.

When he wakes up again, nothing has changed.

 

 

***

 

 _“Where does magic come from?”_ he’d asked Alan Deaton once.

He’d expected some sort of long answer about natural forces and supernatural forces, and energy, and the moon, and the pull of the tides and magnetic fields, and life forces, and whatever the hell else.

Instead, Deaton had only smiled and shaken his head.

_“I don’t know, Stiles. I don’t think anyone knows.”_

 

***

 

There’s a hand on the back of his neck, holding his head upright, and the rim of a plastic cup pressed against his lips. Stiles opens his mouth without even thinking that maybe he shouldn’t, but it’s just water. Sweet, cool water.

As soon as he’s aware of what’s happening, Stiles pushes the cup away, and rolls onto his side. He pulls his legs up and curls his arms protectively over his baby. Keeps his belly to the wall, for what little difference it will make.

“I’ll leave the rest of the cup on the floor,” the man tells him. It's the older man. The one who looks like someone's genial uncle.

“You… you treat all your fucking guests like this?” Stiles growls.

The man doesn’t answer.

Stiles flinches when he hears the door close and a series of bolts slide into place.

 

***

 

Stiles doesn’t know much about Nemetons, not really. He knows they’re mostly trees where druids drew their power, but that those powerful places can also be other things: mounds or standing stones or whatever. Sacred places connected by ley lines. He knows they’re like a network or something. And he knows these assholes are trying to wake the Nemeton in Beacon Hills. Well, it’s not like they denied it, so that’s the working theory he’s going with, okay?

It’s a solid theory.

What still makes no sense to Stiles is the way that everyone in the house wouldn’t wake up. And he knows it’s his fault. Not just because of what his spark told him, but because when the woman finally turns up and slides a tray of food onto the floor, she actually gives him a small smile.

“You made it very easy for us, you know.”

“Fuck you.”

There’s probably a point where he should start trying to bond with these people, trying to sway them, but obviously now isn’t it. If Stiles could actually get off the damn bed without grunting and rolling like a pig in shit, he’d punch that bitch in the face and then rip her fucking throat out.

She closes the door again, and locks it.

It takes Stiles thirty-two seconds to lever himself off the bed.

He counts them.

There is no way Stiles is ever going to get the drop on anyone in thirty-two seconds.

He slides the tray back over to the bed with his foot, then sits down and takes another good minute and a half figuring out how to bend over far enough to pick it up.

It’s soup and bread. Tomato soup, right from the can, without even the courtesy of being heated up first. Stiles doesn’t care. He just folds his freezing fingers around the can and drinks it down like a milkshake.

Then he leans back against the wall and cleans out the inside of the can with bits of bread.

So he made it easy for them.

He doesn’t know how he did it.

He closes his eyes as he chews the bread.

Okay, so forget the _how_. Concentrate on the _why_ instead.

Making everyone fall asleep and stay asleep so that the bad guys don’t see them is childish. It’s ludicrous. It’s the instinct of a frightened little kid, not a nineteen year old who has seen a lot of bad shit in his life, and knows for sure that whenever it happens he wants as many wolves by his side as possible. Safety in numbers, right? But the fear is always still there. The urge to keep them safe and away from harm is always still there. Last year, when there was this thing with a wendigo—gross, by the way—Stiles stood with the pack, baseball bat in hand, and looked around at everyone before they all burst into the warehouse to kill it.

The thought was as sharp and clear as glass: _I love you guys. Please don’t die._

And it’s the thought he has whenever they’re about to barrel headfirst into danger.

_Stay safe._

_Stay alive._

So, yeah, the little kid in him would have done it in a heartbeat: put everyone to sleep so they didn’t get hurt. Because the little kid in him doesn’t think shit through, and never did. It would never have occurred to the little kid that hiding under the covers with your eyes closed isn’t always the safest thing in the world.

It was instinctual.

Dumb, maybe, but instinctual.

And not just instinctual, but the overriding instinct.

If there was some magical fairy godmother flitting around granting wishes on what people instinctively wanted, instead of what logic and good sense said they wanted, then, okay, Stiles can just about see where the sleeping thing came from.

But not the magic. Where did the magic come from?

The Nemeton is asleep too.

And it didn’t come from these assholes, who think it came from him…

 _Fuck_.

_Fuck fuck fuck._

All the fucks.

Because what if it sort of did?

 

***

 

“What are we having?”

Derek glanced at the ultrasound on the fridge. “Um…”

Stiles laughed. “No, I know it’s a boy. But I mean you said once that kids in your pack were either humans or werewolves. So what are we having? Can you tell?”

Derek pulled Stiles into a hug, and turned him so that he could lace his hands over his belly. Stiles put his hands on Derek’s. Grinned at the tiny little clink their wedding rings made when they touched.

Derek’s breath was hot on his throat. “I can’t actually tell.”

“Dammit. Because I want to know whether to buy a rattle or a chew toy.”

Derek chuffed. “Oh, you know it has to be a chew toy. Any kid of yours, whatever species it is, is definitely going to inherit your oral fixation.”

“You love my oral fixation,” Stiles grinned. “At least, you loved it last night.”

“I do love it,” Derek agreed.

Stiles squirmed around in his grasp and licked a quick stripe up the side of his face. “I want to blow you right now, hotwolf. Get you nice and slick and then you can bend me over the counter and—”

“Tata?” Claudie trailed into the kitchen. “What’s for breakfast?”

World’s tiniest, cutest cockblocker.

Derek released him and grabbed Claudie’s cup from the dish rack, then rattled around in the refrigerator for the orange juice.

“Um, oatmeal?” Stiles suggested.

Claudie screwed up her face. “Can’t we have sausages? I love sausages!”

“Me too, Claudie,” Stiles said regretfully, ignoring Derek’s snort of laughter. “Me too.”

 

***

 

“It’s you,” Stiles whispers to the baby. “It’s _you_.”

His baby isn’t a wolf.

His baby is a human.

And his baby isn’t a spark.

His baby is a fucking supernova.

 

***

 

Stiles didn’t go to any prenatal classes. How could he, right? Instead he listened to whatever Deaton and Melissa told him, and watched a hell of a lot of Youtube videos posted by the sort of expectant moms who still wore yoga pants, and were active and smug and _glowed_ , and he kind of hated them and hoped their babies were ugly and never stopped screaming. But apart from all that stuff about how he should only eat organic and try and mediate every day, Stiles did learn that the baby was affected by whatever was going on with him. Like osmosis or something? It had made him feel weird about sex for almost a whole week, before he threw caution to the wind and begged Derek to fuck him until neither of them could walk straight. For all the baby knew he was doing vigorous calisthenics, right? It was sort of true.

But if the baby can feel what he’s feeling, what he was feeling on Thanksgiving night… Stiles’s fear and the baby’s magic… Together they made the spell that sunk the pack into sleep and kept them there.

_Safe._

_Safe safe safe._

Of course, had Stiles known he was dealing with power like that he might have picked something more useful to do with it. Like blast those fucking assholes into the stratosphere or something, but he’s on a learning curve here, okay?

He stares at the runes on the wall and wonders if they’ll prevent him from doing magic.

“Hey, baby,” he whispers, tugging his shirt up and rubbing his belly. “You awake in there?”

He gets an answering kick under his palm.

“We have to get out of here, you and me. We’re a team, okay? We’ve got this, little guy.”

When the baby kicks against his palm again, Stiles imagines it’s a fist bump.

 

***

 

Stiles might not know what the runes are, but his theory that they’re here to cage his magic seems to be a good one. Stiles manages to use the soup can to scrape three of the runes off the wall before the door is flung open and the two men are shoving him back onto the bed.

Then they bring out the chains and the shackles.

When they’re done, Stiles can’t move more than a few feet from the bed. He certainly can’t reach the walls anymore.

It’d be almost funny, if, well, it wasn’t for the fact these people want to kill him and his baby.

His captors obviously think he’s a lot more powerful than he is.

Stiles doesn’t know their names. Their interactions with him are only brief—leaving food, taking out the bucket and bringing it back when he’s done, opening the door every couple of hours to make sure he hasn’t teleported himself away or whatever—and they rarely speak to him.

The older guy is maybe in his fifties. He wears the exact same glasses that Mr. Harris, Stiles’s most hated teacher from high school, wore. And the same sneer. So Stiles calls him Harris in his head. The younger guy is always in a blue shirt. So he’s Blue. And the woman. Stiles went with Megabitch to start with. She is the scariest, no question. It’s that nice smile of hers. Evil shouldn’t be allowed to have a nice smile. It’s false advertising. In the end he settles on Annie, because that’s what the pscyho in _Misery_ was called, and this woman seems to have the same hard on for chains. She gives Stiles a perky smile the first time she sees them on him and Stiles imagines how good it would feel to pound her head against the wall until her skull cracked.

Of the three of them, Stiles thinks that the younger guy is the softest target. He looks like he's still a teenager, and he's wide-eyed whenever he looks at Stiles, like he’s a little unsure, a little nervous.

“I’m cold,” Stiles tells Harris when he brings him water. “Please, dude, I’m _cold_.”

Harris ignores him.

So much for that.

He doesn’t even bother with Annie.

He waits until it’s Blue’s turn to bring him dinner, and curls up and looks pathetic when the door squeals open. Really, it’s not a stretch. He is pretty fucking pathetic right now.

“Hey, please,” he says when Blue pushes the tray over to the bed, within Stiles’s now-severely-curtailed reach. “Please, I need a blanket or something. I’m really cold.”

Blue’s gaze travels over him warily, like he thinks Stiles is actually faking it.

“Look, I don’t know what the fuck you people want, but I’m pretty sure you’re on a schedule, right? Shit like you’re doing, it’s always on a schedule. You want me to die before it’s time? You want my baby to die before it’s time?” Stiles has no idea how he can even say something like that and keep his voice relatively even.

So, there’s a schedule.

There’s always a schedule.

If there wasn’t, he’d be dead already.

Winter Solstice isn’t until late December. It’s the biggie, Stiles guesses, but the timing doesn’t fit. Not if the baby was due to arrive on the twelfth. So whatever it is, it has to be somewhere between now and the original due date. And there’s nothing significant Stiles can think of.

Unless it’s a phase of the moon thing.

Stiles knows his moon phases, okay? Living with werewolves? It’s kind of important. The moon is waning right now. The new moon is on the eleventh. It fits. And wouldn’t that be fucking typical? Stiles and his baby are going to be sacrificed as part of the fucking Twilight saga. Definitely not how he ever wanted to go.

Blue doesn’t say anything, and Stiles swears at the door when he pulls it shut behind him.

Except a little while later he’s back, with an old comforter that smells like damp and moth balls.

Stiles almost starts crying when Blue shakes it out over him.

“Thank you,” he whispers. “Thank you.”

He means it too.

Blue only nods, then steps to the door. When he reaches it, he looks back at Stiles. “Back at your house…why didn’t you defend yourself?”

They must have been watching him, somehow, Stiles decides. Or maybe watching Deaton or Melissa, or listening in on their phone calls or something. And they must have taken him the night of Thanksgiving, because the Caesarean had been moved up. They must have known that they had to act that night.

“Can’t,” Stiles says, but he doesn’t want to leave this guy with the impression that he’s almost a total muggle. Because the fact that the baby has all the magic might be unknown to his captors. And, if it is, it might be the only advantage Stiles has, even if he doesn’t know how to use it. So he thinks back to what Deaton told him. “It’s all about the balance. I burn out the spark and maybe there’s not enough to sustain the pregnancy, you know?”

For a second something that might almost be sympathy flashes across Blue’s face, and then he nods and pulls the door shut behind him.

Stiles snuggles down with the blanket over him.

“Nineteen years of being a cop’s kid,” he whispers to the baby. “Dad always said if anything ever happened, you go along with it. You be the most compliant little captive in the world, but if you see a chance to get away, any chance at all, you fucking take it.”

And Stiles guesses that his dad wasn’t exactly thinking of scenarios like this one, but the same rules apply. He might not be able to run, but he can spot the weak link here, and it’s Blue.

The opposite of Stockholm Syndrome is Lima Syndrome.

Stiles is going to Lima Syndrome the shit out of this guy.

 

***

 

 

Stiles wakes up in what might be the middle of the night crying in pain.

“No,” he whispers, hugging his arms to his belly. “No, come on, _no_.”

It’s like the worst fucking charley horse ever.

Melissa and Deaton had warned him about this. They’d said if he ever got any cramps at all, to call them immediately. Because it’s not like Stiles can just let nature take its course, right? He’s a guy. Nature literally has no course to take here. The only way the baby can come out is if someone cuts him out.

“No,” he groans as another pain tears through him. “No, little guy, don’t do this to me.”

_Oh fuck._

_Fuck fuck fuck._

He pulls in a shuddering breath. “ _A-a-a, a-a-a, byly sobie kotki dwa._ ” He presses his hands against his belly to try and ease another cramp. “ _A-a-a, kotki dwa, szarobure, szarobure obydwa_ —”

The door wrenches open with a squeal, and light floods the room.

Stiles flinches back, sobbing, and suddenly Annie is there, gripping his hair in her fist and wrenching his head back. There’s a blade against his throat. “What are you saying? What spell is that?”

Stiles wails as pain tears through him.

Annie pulls his head back further. “What spell is that?”

“It’s a song!” Stiles yells at her through his tears, terrified and furious at the same time. “It’s a fucking _lullaby_!”

She releases his hair, and then suddenly brings her palm down. Slaps him in the face so hard that his head jerks back.

“The baby’s coming! I think the baby’s coming!”

The blood runs from her face, and she puts her hands on his belly.

“No, don’t you touch me!” Stiles tries to roll away, but he’s got no leverage.

The commotion has brought the others too: Harris and Blue. And, fuck it, there are more people standing outside the door. How big is this fucking cult? And seriously, there’s not a single one of them who’ll step up and help him? He’s in pain, and he’s terrified, and so much for their damned schedule, right?

Stiles throws Annie’s hands off, but then Blue is there, kneeling beside the bed. “It’s not due yet. Not for another two weeks.”

“Well maybe it didn’t get the memo!” Stiles grunts.

Blue puts his hands on Stiles’s belly, tugging his shirt up to do it. And for a second Stiles is going to shove him away too, but then he sees it: black lines crawling up the veins in Blue’s hands.

The pain eases, but Stiles’s tears don’t.

“Oh, fuck you, dude,” Stiles says in a whisper, holding Blue’s gaze. “Fuck you sideways.”

Because Blue is a fucking werewolf.

 

***

 

Stiles doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night, even though the pain doesn’t come back. Who knew that he could even get Braxton Hicks contractions? Melissa and Deaton had talked about the possibility of false labor pains, but Stiles had hoped that it wouldn’t be an issue. He doesn’t have the requisite parts, right? But maybe nobody told the baby that.

He lies awake, his legs drawn up to try and ease the tightness in his core.

Blue is a werewolf, and for all he knows the baby is one too. Which makes him a fucking traitor to his own kind, right? Stiles doesn’t know why he’s so surprised. The guy’s already a potential baby killer. What’s the difference, really?

He wonders how close Blue is. Wonders if that werewolf hearing is in range.

“My alpha is going to rip your throat out,” he says in a low voice. “Whatever happens here, however this ends for me and for my baby, you can fucking guarantee that, asshole. He will hunt you down and tear you apart even if it takes him a lifetime.”

It gives him a fierce, low burn of satisfaction to say it, and to know that the werewolf will be able to tell it’s the absolute truth.

“He is going to kill you and everything you love.”

So much for the Lima Syndrome.

Well, fuck it, right?

Was probably a long shot anyway.


	6. Chapter 6

 

Stiles doesn’t know how many days it’s been.

Derek and the pack must be frantic by now. And his dad. And Claudie. Jesus, Stiles can’t even think of Claudie without tearing up. In his darkest moments he wonders if she’s destined to lose him in every fucking reality in the multiverse.

Stiles has a lot of dark moments.

His back aches if he lies flat for too long. It also aches if he curls up for too long. It just fucking aches, actually. Maybe those smug moms from Youtube were actually right about all that yoga bullshit. Stiles tries a few stretches, then gives up again when he accidentally smacks himself in the face with his chain.

He’s so desperate to move, to try and get some relief, that he even asks Annie when she turns up to give him lunch. He’s also getting pretty sick of cold soup in a can, but he keeps that to himself. Being the polite guest that he is.

“Hey, can we take the chains off, please?”

She give him her kindest, creepiest smile, and tilts her head on an angle while she listens to him, like he’s just the cutest little thing in the world.

“I hurt, okay?” Stiles tells her. “I just want to be able to get up and do a few laps of the room or whatever.”

He’s not surprised when she ignores him and leaves.

He huddles under his stinky comforter and drinks his soup.

When the door opens again, it’s Blue.

Stiles rakes his gaze over him. Yeah, young, although that’s all relative, isn’t it? Stiles is only nineteen, and feels about fucking ninety at the moment. Staring your mortality—and your baby’s—right in the face for days on end will do that. Blue though, he looks young.

Stiles slurps down the last of his soup and dumps the can on the floor. “What?”

Blue crosses over to the bed.

“Shouldn’t you be in school or something?” Stiles asks him. “Like middle school?”

“You want me to take your pain or not, mage?”

Stiles might be an idiot—ask anyone who knows him—but he’s not enough of an idiot to turn that offer down. He’s also spent long enough around wolves to know exactly when they’re posturing. Blue’s not as hostile as his tone suggests. He’s scared.

“Yeah,” he says, and lies down on his side. He keeps his back to Blue.

Blue’s touch is tentative. He puts one hand on Stiles’s hip, and Stiles feels a gentle wave of relief wash over him. It’s followed immediately by an acute rush of homesickness. Stiles’s breath hitches, and he turns his face into the thin mattress. It takes him a few moments to be sure he’s not going to cry.

“Where’s your pack?” he asks Blue.

“I’m not allowed to talk to you,” Blue murmurs.

Interesting.

So the rest of them know that Blue’s the weak link too, that’s he _still_ the weak link despite Stiles’s previous hostility. Stiles wants to push a little more, but now isn’t the time. And timing is everything here. So Stiles doesn’t ask any more questions. He just lies there quietly and lets Blue take his pain, the way only Derek used to.

 

***

 

Stiles knows four things.

He knows that his baby is magical. And not in a smug internet mommy way, but in a legit can-bend-the-universe-to-his-will kind of way.

He knows that he can’t use that magic while those fucking runes are on the wall.

He knows that he has to find a way to exploit Blue’s unease to get the hell out of here.

And he knows that he’s running out of time.

 

*** 

So it turns out that staring at Younger Futhark for hours and days on end doesn’t actually make it make sense. Who knew? But it’s not likes Stiles has TV, right? So what is there to do except look at the runes on the wall and try to remember which one is _úr_ and which one is _yr_? Not exactly how Stiles thought he’d be spending the holiday season. It must be December by now, right? It must be. Anyway, Stiles figured he be cutting out paper snowflakes with Claudie, and making Derek hang them up, because Stiles and stepladders? No way would his protectivewolf risk that. Particularly not after the incident with the nail gun and the porch. So it’s December, and Stiles should be making decorations and baking gingerbread, and doing all that sort of Christmas shit that you’re totally allowed to do when you have little kids and pretend it’s all for them. Jesus. Has Derek remembered the wolf-themed advent calendar Stiles had tracked down and then hidden at the back of their closet so Claudie couldn’t find it? Has he gotten it out so Claudie can open the first little windows? Because that advent calendar hadn’t been exactly easy to find, even with all Stiles’s google-fu powers. And just because Stiles isn’t there, that had better not mean that Derek’s cancelled Christmas like some sort of Grinchwolf. Because Stiles will kick his ass if he has.

He _will_ , because Stiles isn’t done, and he’s not going to die here. He’s going to get home, and save Christmas, and fuck everyone who thinks he’s not.

“My life is not a horror movie, baby,” he says, rubbing his belly. “My life is a _Christmas_ movie.”

The baby kicks.

All this time, Stiles thinks, they’ve been listening to him. They barged in pretty damn quickly when he was singing the Polish lullaby, didn’t they? And who better to have his ear to the ground than their little tame werewolf with his supernatural hearing? Stiles wonders if Blue is outside in the hall again now.

“I bet you have your daddy’s eyes, Conor,” Stiles says. _Use his name. Use his name and make him_ real. _Make him harder to kill._ “I bet you do. Can you keep a secret, Conor? I tell everyone that the first time I met your daddy that it was his eyes I noticed, but that’s a total lie. I was fifteen, and he was wearing tight jeans and a leather jacket. I didn’t even know he _had_ eyes.”

His breath hitches, and he almost smiles at the memory, even though it hurts. “And he was all growly and threatening, and, holy shit, I hated him so, _so_ much because he was hot, and hot always translates as arrogant douchebag.” He closes his eyes and rolls his shoulders as a twinge shoots up his back. “Except Tata was wrong about Daddy, wasn’t he? Tata is usually a pretty smart cookie, but not that time. It was just like _Pride and Prejudice_. I mean, _exactly_ like that. Daddy was just really bad at dealing with people, and Tata totally jumped to conclusions.”

Stiles is absolutely the Lizzy Bennet to Derek’s Mr. Darcy.

Also, Der would look so good in a cravat.

Regencywolf.

This time he does smile, despite himself. “Everyone is waiting for you, Conor. They’re gonna howl at the moon for you to welcome you into the pack, and Daddy’s gonna howl the loudest of all. The alpha’s gotta let the world know his son is here. Howl it so loud the moon can hear it as well.”

Stiles isn’t a wolf, so he knows he’ll never understand exactly the way some things are hardwired into them, like their need for pack, for territory, for hierarchy.

But Blue understands. Blue can feel it in his bones. Feel the loss of it.

Later, when Blue slips into the room with more goddamn soup, Stiles sees it in his wide gaze: guilt.

And Stiles can work with guilt.

 

***

 

“What’s the date today?” Stiles asks Blue.

Blue hesitates, like he’s afraid it’s a trick. “Um, the sixth?”

So he has five days.

“I can never remember if that’s swans a-swimming or geese a-laying,” Stiles says. His usual self-depreciation is there, but his tone is flat. He’s tired. He wants to go home. “Past day five, and I need a cheat sheet.”

Blue doesn’t react. Just keeps his hand on Stiles’s shoulder to draw out his aches and pains. Stiles is sitting hunched over on the bed, his feet on the floor and the comforter pulled around him.

Stiles lowers his voice. “Why are you even with these people, dude? They’re not your pack.”

“They…they _are_.” Blue’s fingers dig into Stiles’s shoulders, and Stiles knows he’s hit exactly the right nerve.

“They’re not wolves,” Stiles tells him. “Not that they need to be. My pack is almost half human, but these guys? This isn’t a pack. This is a cult.”

Blue doesn’t answer.

“When you draw my pain out, you can feel it, right?” Stiles asks. “Can you…can you feel Conor’s as well? Is he hurting?”

Blue’s eyes flash for a second. They’re blue as well. Stiles would congratulate himself on picking a perfect nickname for the guy if he didn’t know exactly what that color meant. Of course Blue has killed an innocent before. “He’s fine.”

“For five more days, right?” Stiles can’t keep the bitterness out of his voice, and doesn’t even try.

Blue drops his gaze.

“The thing is,” Stiles murmurs, “the Nemeton isn’t good or bad. It can be used for either. But you wake it with the blood of a baby, then how do you think that’s going to turn out? You think you’re going to end up with a nice little tree? There are other ways to get power. Ways where nobody gets hurt.” He shakes his head as he looks at Blue. “You don’t even have a clue, do you? Of course you don’t. You’re a werewolf, not a druid. I can’t even figure out what you’re doing with these assholes. But, dude, I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t have to tell you that killing a baby is wrong.”

“It’s about balance,” Blue whispers. “The power you have, it doesn’t belong here. We’re giving it back to the earth!”

“Is that what they told you? You’re killing a _baby_!” Stiles wrenches away from him, hissing as Blue’s claws tear at the flesh of his shoulder. He didn’t even realize they’d descended. “You’re killing Conor.”

Blue stares at him, wide-eyed, and Stiles is struck again by exactly how young he looks.

“What happened to you?” he whispers. “Why don’t you have a pack?”

Blue presses his lips together tightly.

“Who did you hurt?” Stiles asks. “Who did you kill?”

Blue moves like he’s got the legions of hell at his heels. He’s through the door and it’s slammed shut before Stiles can even blink.

Well.

Stiles guesses he hit another nerve.

 

***

 

“Derek,” Stiles whispers into the night. “Der, please find us. Please hurry. We’re running out of time.”

 

***

 

It’s Harris who brings Stiles his soup the next morning.

Four days to go, Stiles thinks. Four days.

“Any chance of a shower?” Stiles asks flatly. “I reek.”

The scant light glints on Harris’s glasses, but he doesn’t answer.

Just shuts the door and bolts it again.

 

***

 

Three days to go.

 

***

 

Stiles jams his hands over his ears when the fuckers start to chant. There are six of them in his room. Blue isn’t here. And they’re chanting, just like they did in his dream. Oh, and wearing the same robes they must have got from a fire sale at a Halloween store. They’re so fucking clichéd it kills him.

Well, it’s going to, right?

No.

Not even funny.

He supposes that a part of him should listen, to see if he knows the words, but he’s pretty certain he doesn’t, and he’s even more certain that even knowing won’t help. This is bush-league bullshit. Sacrifice 101. Cults for Dummies. Stiles knows how it’s going to play out. They’re going to come and chant at him every few hours and then, when the moon is new, they’re going to take him to the Nemeton and cut him open on it. Spill his blood and Conor’s, and bring the Nemeton screaming back to life.

He keeps his fingers jammed over his ears.

Doesn’t want to hear this.

Doesn’t want Conor to hear it either, but he can’t prevent it.

 _“Vivaldi,”_ he dad said a few months ago.

_“What?”_

_“Vivaldi. Four Seasons.”_ His dad smiled and shook his head. _“Your mom said that whenever she listened to it, you stopped squirming. So we tried it when you were born and wouldn’t stop crying some nights. It didn’t do a damn thing. You know the only thing that would shut you up?”_

_“What?”_

_“The popcorn maker.”_

_“Seriously?”_

_“Yeah. You always were a little different, kiddo.”_

_“No, I mean we had a popcorn maker? What happened to it?”_

With Claudie it was the Polish lullaby.

With Conor, he’ll never know, will he?

 

***

 

When they leave him, Stiles is drained. He’s not sure if it’s anything to do with the chant, or if he’s just tired and terrified and weak.

“Derek, please come and find us,” he whispers into the thin mattress. “Please. I want to go home now. I want to be done. I’m not strong and brave and awesome. I’m really scared, Der. I’m really scared.”

It’s Derek’s birthday soon. Fucking December babies, trying to steal all the Christmas spotlight. Derek is really bad with birthdays. Like, he tries, but he always gets this look on his face when he unwraps presents like he’s already anticipating how awkward it’s going to be when he has to pretend he likes something that’s totally crappy. Really, he has no faith in Stiles and he should, because Stiles finds the best presents.

The problem is, Derek doesn’t like _things_. He doesn’t see the point of them. It’s a side effect, Stiles thinks, not just of losing everything he owned and everyone he loved when he was a teenager, but because, in his heart, the skin that best fits Derek is his wolf’s skin. And his wolf only needs his pack. Everything else is incidental. He’s lucky he has Stiles, or he wouldn’t have any nice things at all.

This year Stiles is getting a tattoo for Derek’s birthday. He’s getting the Hale triskele on his back, the same as Derek. And anyone who thinks that getting a tattoo on himself isn’t actually a present for Derek just doesn’t understand how enthralled Derek will be with that tattoo. They won’t know what that tattoo means: _Derek, I’m yours. Your pack, your mate, your everything. And you’re mine too._ Stiles hates needles and pain—he fainted when Scott got his tattoo back in high school—but it’s going to be worth it just to feel Derek’s fingers tracing the curves of the triskele. And his tongue, yes please.

It _was_ going to be worth it.

No.

No, it _is_.

Stiles has to keep believing in their future. He has to, or these assholes will destroy him before they even draw blood.

He needs to get the fuck out of here.

“Dude,” he says in a low voice, wondering if Blue is listening. “All that stuff I said about my alpha coming for you? Totally true. But you help me and Conor get home to him, and he’ll let you live. I’ll make sure he does. Jesus, I don’t know what happened to you, but I know why your eyes flash blue. Derek’s did too, before he was the alpha. So he knows, okay? He knows that sometimes people fuck up. He knows they deserve second chances. These people here, they aren’t a pack. They aren’t your family, okay? What kind of leash have they got you on anyway?”

He rubs his hand over his belly.

“Please, dude, come on. I think we both know you’re the only one who can help me. Please let me take Conor home to his pack.”

The minutes stretch out into hours.

 

***

 

Two days to go, and more fucking chanting.

 

***

 

“You want the Nemeton to wake?” Stiles yells at the door. “You’re fucking _amateurs_! You’re messing around with shit you don’t even _begin_ to understand! You wake power like that with blood, and it’ll demand _more_. It’ll never fucking end, and you won’t be able to control it! It’ll kill you all!”

 

***

 

“Derek, please,” Stiles whispers, wincing as another pain takes him. “Please.”

Warm hands on his belly, and relief comes flooding in.

“Thank you,” Stiles whispers. “Thank you, Der. Love you.”

 

***

 

Stiles kicks the comforter off, and grumbles when someone puts it back over him.

“He has a fever. He’s sick.”

“He’s faking,” Annie says.

“No, I can feel it,” Blue tells her. “It’s real.”

“It doesn’t matter now anyway.”

Dammit. Stiles was supposed to be counting, right? Counting the days? What are they up to now? He tries to figure it out, but he’s distracted suddenly by the sound of Claudie’s laughter ringing in his mind, so he follows that instead. Finds her sitting on the living room floor gluing red autumnal leaves together.

“Tata, Thanksgiving will be so pretty,” she tells him.

“Yeah.” He smiles at her, but something feels wrong. Shouldn’t they be cutting out snowflakes by now? What day is it, even?

“Aunt Lydia says the pilgrims were dicks,” Claudie says solemnly.

“Aunt Lydia should watch her mouth around little wolves with big ears.”

Claudie laughs, and Stiles doesn’t understand why his heart breaks when he hears it.

 

***

 

He’s still a bit delirious when Blue takes the chains off him, and helps him to his feet. He’s shivering, and tries to tug the comforter around his shoulders. It puddles on the floor instead, and Stiles can’t figure out how to lean down and pick it up.

“Is it today?” he whispers. “They gonna kill us today?”

“Shut up,” Blue growls.

The hallway outside the room is dark. Stiles can’t see a fucking thing, but Blue has an arm around him and is making sure he doesn’t walk into any walls, which is okay, Stiles guesses. Apart from how he’s leading him to his own execution and all.

“I didn’t do this,” Stiles whispers to him. “This whole magical baby thing. That wasn’t me. I don’t have that power, so it’s like if you think I’m gonna supercharge your evil fucking tree, you know, results may vary. _Caveat emptor_.”

“Shut up!”

Wait, what?

Holy fuck, is this a _rescue_?

Because that would be all kinds of awesome.

Stiles shuts up.

 

***

 

When Blue pushes open the outside door, the cold air hits Stiles and he shudders. Then Blue hustles him down a set of steps, and his bare feet are touching freezing concrete. Where the hell are they, even?

Some kind of warehouse? It’s too dark to see clearly. Stiles twists his neck to look behind him, and sees the dark shape of the warehouse roof against the dim starlight. Nothing looks familiar, but they can’t be too far from Beacon Hills, right? Not too far from the Nemeton.

And there are trees close by, like the woods are encroaching on the warehouse.

Maybe the old cannery? That would make sense. It’s about fifteen miles out of town, it’s been abandoned for years, and if Stiles was ever the location scout for a cheesy horror movie it would definitely make his list of top five places. It’s probably on a par with the old railway depot that Derek holed up in when he first got back to Beacon Hills.

Blue pulls him toward the trees.

Okay, so.

Fifteen miles out of Beacon Hills, and it’s freezing, and Stiles is nine months pregnant and he’s not even wearing shoes. He’s also about to dive into the woods with a werewolf he doesn’t know and definitely doesn’t trust, and tonight is probably the night he’s due to be sacrificed to the Nemeton. Way to last minute it, Blue.

Still, he doesn’t hesitate.

Because there is no doubt in his mind that going with Blue is the best option.

The only option.

They’re barely in the first line of trees when a car sweeps into the cannery yard, headlights arcing into the woods.

“Shit,” Blue says, eyes wide.

So much for getting away clean. Like fate couldn’t even give them a five minute head start?

They stumble into the woods.

“Do you have a phone?” Stiles asks, already gasping for breath.

“No.”

Of course he fucking doesn’t.

“Do you know how to get to Beacon Hills from here?”

“Kind of?”

Stiles is not a fan of the way he turned that answer into a question. “Dude, can you smell my pack?”

Blue shakes his head.

_Fuck fuck fuck._

Any second now, and the woods will be full of really angry cult members looking for their sacrifice. And Stiles is so slow right now that they probably won’t even need a locator spell, they could just follow the sounds of his heavy breathing.

He needs to get to the pack, or to town. Angry wolves or an angry Sheriff’s Department; either would be good right now. Sure, turning up heavily pregnant in front of all his dad’s deputies would be awkward to explain later, but if it comes down to a choice between awkward and dead, Stiles is going to chose awkward every time. Because despite what most people seem to think, Stiles is capable of making the right choices at least some of the time.

Except Blue obviously doesn’t know the area, and Stiles has absolutely no sense of direction. If they stuck to the roads, maybe, but they can’t do that. He doesn’t even have a watch on and, if he did, he can never remember how to use it as a compass anyway, despite all the times his dad tried to show him on camping trips when he was a kid.

He draws a deep breath and ignores the stab of pain it causes.

No compass, except…

Except tonight, for whatever reason, the Nemeton is ready to wake. It’s as close to alive as it’s been in a long time. And Stiles is a _spark_ , right? He might not be able to tell north from south, but he knows magic. Knows it when he sees it. When he _senses_ it.

Oh, this could be a really, really bad idea, except Stiles has been to the Nemeton. He knows it’s close enough to pack territory that Derek heard him screaming his name from there.

If Stiles can’t find home, he needs to find the Nemeton.

He closes his eyes, exhales, and waits to feel it.

It’s nothing, really. Just a prickling on his consciousness, just an itch. But he feels it.

“This way,” he says, grabbing Blue by the wrist. “Come on, this way.”

They plunge into the darkness.

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

It feels like they’ve been running for at least six hundred years—cold leaves crunching under his bare feet, and thin branches slapping him in the face—but when Stiles stops to suck in a breath and turns around to look back the way they’ve come, he’s pretty sure he can still see the shape of the warehouse through the trees. And possibly the beams of flashlights cutting through the trees. And now Blue’s leading him up a goddamned _hill_?

“Dude, _fuck_ …”

“Do you want to get away, or don’t you?” Blue hisses at him.

Well, if he puts it like that…

Stiles’s life is not a horror movie, or a Christmas movie. Right now it’s _The Great Escape_ , and Stiles is about to Steve McQueen his way right back into Beacon Hills. If Steve McQueen had been nine months pregnant while trying to escape the Nazis. Which would have made a whole other sort of movie, probably. And not one Stiles would actually want to watch, honestly. Well, _maybe_. Like if there was nothing else on.

Blue drags him up the hill.

At first Stiles thinks the roar in his ears is the blood rushing in the skull.

But it’s not.

It’s the river.

They’re on a bluff overlooking the river. It must be a thirty foot drop. Into rushing, freezing water.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” he chokes.

Blue is wide eyed. “They’re going to catch us!”

Stiles stares down into the icy river. He blinks, and sees the runes he’s been starting at for the past however-the-fuck-long burned on his retinas.

Ice.

_Bark of rivers_ _and roof of the wave and destruction of the doomed._

But if the fall doesn’t kill him, and the cold doesn’t, then that current will carry him away from his abductors.

“Oh, Jesus,” he whispers, and his breath hangs like smoke on the air between them.

What the hell is hitting the water going to do to the baby?

“Come here,” Blue says, drawing him closer to the edge of the bluff. “Come on!”

“You—” Stiles chokes out, but can’t finish it.

_I’m not bulletproof like you, asshole. And Conor sure as hell isn’t._

But he’s out of options, and he knows it.

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut, tightens his grip on Blue’s hand, and together they jump.

 

***

 

Stiles is cold, and he’s choking, and he has no fucking idea what’s going on, except that he’s in so much fucking pain it feels like he’s going to die. His skin is ice, but there’s pain tearing through him that’s so hot that it burns. The cold and the heat meet inside him, jagged edges clashing, and Stiles thinks he’s going to rip apart.

His heels snag against roots and rocks and mud.

Blue is dragging him. He’s got his arms under Stiles’s armpits from behind, and he’s dragging him.

It’s dark, and it’s cold, and he hurts so much.

 

 

***

 

The smug YouTube moms always talked about birth plans.

“Do we have a birth plan?” Derek had asked once.

“Yes,” Stiles said. “We plan to turn up, have a baby cut out of me, and go home again.”

The birth plans of the smug glowing moms on YouTube tended to include things like playlists of rainforest sounds, and massage oil and aromatherapy, like they were going for a day at the spa or something. But then they probably weren’t intending on giving birth at the local animal clinic either.

Stiles has always been a rule-breaker.

“We don’t need a birth plan, Der,” he said. “Those are for women who are looking at spending hours in labor, you know? They’re gonna be trying to walk it off, and having hot showers, and screaming to Enya and shit. Me, I’m going in at a pre-arranged time, having all the good drugs, not feeling a goddamn thing, no muss, no fuss. That’s our plan, and it is infallible!”

And the Titanic was unsinkable, right?

 

***

 

Blue has dragged him into…a cave? It stinks, like something pissed in every single corner of the place, then curled up and died there. Stiles is still dripping wet, and covered in mud, and trying to remember to cover his mouth whenever he has to scream.  

Blue is kneeling over him. His hands are on Stiles, but the pain isn’t going anywhere. It’s like water filling a leaky boat faster than Blue can bail it out.

Stiles tries to feel the Nemeton, to feel how close it is, but the only thing he can feel is the way his body is trying to rip itself apart.

“He needs to come out,” he gasps, reaching for Blue’s hand. “He needs to come out _now_.”

Blue stares down at him. “Can’t you like hold it in?”

“It’s a baby, not a shit!” Stiles doesn’t know what will happen if he tries. He only knows that Conor needs to come out _now_ , and there’s no time to wait to get home. Stiles can do the math. If he doesn’t get Conor out now, they probably both die. And if he does get Conor out…well, that’s the choice, right? That’s the choice he makes.

He drags Blue’s hand up into his line of sight. “Give me your claws.”

“What?” Blue lurches back. “ _What?_ ”

“Don’t freak out on me now, dude.” Stiles clenches his fingers around Blue’s wrist. “You fucking owe me this.”

Blue’s hand is shaking.

“Give me your claws!” Stiles hisses.

Blue’s nails elongate, thicken, and sharpen into claws. Stiles guides his hand to his belly. He’s breathing heavily, not quite sure how’s he’s not freaking out more, because this is… this is _necessary_.

“Okay, listen,” he whispers. “Look.” He tugs his soaked shirt up, and draws Blue’s shaking claws gently across his abdomen. “Here to here, okay? Don’t cut him though. Don’t cut him.”

Blue suddenly looks very young. “Stiles…”

It’s the first time he’s called Stiles by name.

“You’ve got this, dude,” Stiles tells him, another cramp wracking him. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, and hot tears slide down his cheeks. He’s gripping Blue’s wrist so tightly that he can feel the bones creak. If Blue weren’t a werewolf, Stiles would probably break something. “Hey,” he rasps, because it suddenly seems like it’s important to know. “What’s your name anyway?”

“Liam,” Blue says, voice shaking. “It’s Liam.”

Huh.

Blue totally suits him better.

 

***

 

There is more pain that Stiles is even remotely prepared to deal with. Not like he hasn’t been slashed in the gut with claws before—hey, it’s Beacon Hills, okay—but this is so _slow_. Stiles is used to pain that comes in short, hot bursts, pain that flares bright, so quick that understanding lags a few moments behind. He’s used to being that guy in the movie who says “We did it, guys!” in a dazed way, then looks down in confusion before noticing he’s been shot. Stiles acts first and he acts fast, and lets his pack, and the medical professionals, deal with the fallout.

This is slow. This is excruciating. Stiles fights not to pass out, because he needs to stay awake for this. Needs to make sure Liam knows what to do. And he wants to see his son’s face, just once.

Except _just once_ is a lie. Stiles wants to see it more than just once. He wants to see it now and for always. He wants to know what his boy will look like as he grows, and when he’s grown. Except _just once_ is the deal he makes with himself and with the universe to give himself enough strength to see this through.

There’s so much pain, more than Liam can draw out despite his efforts, and then there’s a sickening sort of pressure, and everything feels wrong, and he wants to scream and shove Liam away because fuck his life, what the hell was he thinking?

So much blood.

More than enough to wake a thirsty Nemeton, probably, and Stiles is perversely pleased that he’s losing it here, on the floor of the cave, instead of into the dry, sucking roots of the stump.

And then suddenly there’s Conor, and holy mother of Zeus, he’s a horror movie. Covered in blood, and _stuff_ , and Stiles is so overwhelmed he starts shaking and crying. Liam lays Conor on his chest, and Stiles holds him, and yeah. Yeah. If this is the only moment he gets, Stiles isn’t going to waste it by freaking out about the blood.

“Hey, Conor,” he whispers. “Hey.”

He can’t stop shaking. Cold, or blood loss, or shock, or all of them at once.

But he has a baby, and he has so much to tell him.

He wants to tell Conor how desperate his Daddy and Claudie are to meet him. Except he also wants to tell him not to let Claudie push him around, because if he gives her an inch she’ll take a mile. He wants to tell him to look after his Daddy, and to try and make him laugh, because his Daddy has the best laugh in the world, and it’s not fair that he’s going to be sad again.

He cradles Conor against his chest as carefully as he can. A red face with a furrowed brow and pinched little lips like he’s been here for all of two minutes and he’s already pissed about something. He’s going to give his Daddy hell. An impossibly tiny hand is curled under his chin, fragile little wrinkled fingers bloody. His chest rises and falls and he makes a sound like a hiccup.

His eyes blink open, but it’s too dark to tell what color they are. Stiles is going to imagine they’re like Derek’s.

“Conor,” he whispers.

There are things that Stiles wants to write on Conor’s bones so that he’ll always know them.

He wants to tell Conor how much he loves him.

He wants to tell him how sorry he is that these few minutes can’t be a lifetime.

Liam is jostling him, and it takes Stiles a moment to realize why. Liam has his own shirt pulled off, and he’s wrapping it around Stiles’s middle. He’s trying to tie it tight, but his hands are slippery with blood, and what the hell good is a shirt going to do anyway?

“Take him,” Stiles whispers. “Before he gets too cold.”

Werewolves run hotter than humans. He’ll be okay with Liam if Liam is quick.

“Why aren’t you…” Liam swallows with an audible click. “Why are you getting better?”

 _Because I’m a_ human _? Idiot._

“Stiles?”

Oh, right. He’s supposed to be a powerful mage, isn’t he? The usual rules of human frailty aren’t supposed to apply.

“Total muggle,” he whispers.

“What? No, you did that sleep spell!” Liam presses his hands against Stiles’s abdomen like he thinks that’ll make a difference at this point.

“Wasn’t me,” Stiles says, and it’s kind of the truth.

Can Conor still feel what Stiles is feeling, or did his magic only combine with Stiles’s instincts when Conor was unborn, being carried inside him? But if Conor is a supernova, Stiles is eclipsed. Stiles is less than nothing, and he’s fading into the black.  

This is winning though, isn’t it?

This is depriving the Nemeton of his blood. This is still giving one of them the chance to make it home.

“Take him,” he whispers to Liam. “Take him to his pack.”

 

***

 

Wanting something isn’t enough.

Stiles wants to live.

He wanted his mom to live, once. Burned so fiercely with the need of it he should have been able to ignite the world, but it wasn’t enough.

When he was little, she used to sing him the song about the two kittens, the song about the stars. _Oh, sleep, my darling. If you'd like a star from the sky I'll give you one._ When he was little, Stiles used to imagine cupping a star in his hands and holding it between them so that it illuminated their smiling faces. The gift of light, of life, given and shared.

It made no sense that she could die.

It still makes no sense.

Light like that shouldn’t be dimmed.

He wonders if that’s why wolves sound so sad when they howl at the moonlight. He wonders if they’re begging it not to leave them alone in the dark.

 

***

 

There is a boy standing in the dim green light of the cave.

“You again,” Stiles murmurs, and the boy turns to face him. Stiles blinks up at him. He looks a little different than last time. Younger, maybe, than when Stiles knew him. Scruffier hair. Something in his posture that feels new, or in the quirk in his mouth. Or maybe Stiles is just losing blood so fast that his vision is going.

“So,” the boy says. “Do you want to know what happens next?”

Does he?

Stiles nods.

The boy cards his fingers through his hair. “When Liam gets closer to pack territory, he howls. Brings the pack running. They’ve been going crazy with you gone. And what do they find? A rogue omega covered in your blood, holding your baby.”

_What?_

“It’s pretty brutal,” the boy says frankly. “But you didn’t care what happened to Liam really, did you?”

“I—” No, he did. He _does_. Liam might have been late to the party, but he’s helping Stiles now. All that stuff about second chances? Stiles _meant_ that.

“And this whole time you’ve been thinking these freaky guys in robes had _nothing_? You were wrong.” The boy shakes his head. “You were so wrong. Did it ever occur to you that they walked right into a pack house to take you? Did you really think they had no way to overpower wolves? To overpower an _alpha_?”

The boy laughs, and the sound is sharp, and ugly.

“Why are…” Why is he _saying_ this?

“They planned this for _years_. Kill the mage on the Nemeton to wake it. Cut his baby out. But what you don’t know, what Deaton is only just figuring out right now, is their fucking schedule. The Nemeton is ancient. It’s been there for eons. It needs something a little more protracted than a sacrifice that’s over in a few beats of a heart to interest it enough to wake.” The boy’s mouth thins, and turns down at the corners. His eyes blaze with anger. “Every month they’re going to take your baby there, and they’re going to bleed it until it’s almost dead. Then they’re going to stitch it up and shove a tube down its throat to feed it enough to keep it alive for the next month, and the next, and the _next_. Keep it alive in that cold, dirty room with the runes on the walls. And they’re going to do this for _years_ , until that tree finally sprouts a new shoot, and _then_ they’re going to kill your baby. Only then.”

“No, Derek…my dad…”

“Derek _dies_!”

 _No_. Stiles chokes on a sob. _No_.

“And how long do you think your dad will last when the entire pack is dead?”

No, not his dad. And not Claudie either, his little growly girl.

“You’re lying!” Stiles tries to yell, but it’s more of a broken whisper.

“Everyone dies,” the boy says, his gaze narrow. “Everyone.”

That can’t be true, because no way can six or so humans, even ones who chant backward in Latin, overcome a wolf pack, and some hunters, and an emissary, and the Sheriff of Beacon Hills. No fucking way.

“Fucking bullshit,” Stiles grunts. “Because you’re not really here. You’re not really _real_. You said you don’t know the answers to things I don’t know! You’re just my fucking fear talking!”

The boy tilts his head, his brow furrowing. “Wait,” he says, his tone softening. “Who do you think I _am_?”

Stiles blinks up at him, and _sees_ him for the first time.

It’s not him. It looks like him, but it’s not him.

The boy kneels down and puts a hand over Stiles’s abdomen.

And in that instant Stiles knows. It’s impossible—since when has Stiles’s life been anything but impossible?—but he _knows_.

 “Conor?” His voice breaks on his name.

 

***

 

Magic is nothing but wish fulfilment. It really is that simple.

On Thanksgiving night, Stiles wished for the pack to stay asleep so they didn’t get hurt.

A little while ago he wished he knew what Conor looked like when he was grown.

And this whole time, he’s wished to survive.

Most people don’t get what they wish for.

Most people don’t even know that they could, if only they had the right spark, the right words, the right power to bend the universe to their will. Most people don’t know that magic is real and, even of those who do, most people don’t like to take the chance that the universe, although it may bend, might ask for something in return that is impossible to pay.

Most people don’t have the power to control magic, because it’s a tricky thing, a liquid thing, full of variables as tangled and complicated as the twisting roots of an ancient tree.

Most people aren’t strong enough, or smart enough, or brave enough.

Most people aren’t Conor Stilinski-Hale.

 

***

 

Stiles doesn’t ask how Conor got here.

Doesn’t ask how he heals him.

Doesn’t ask anything.

Just wraps his arms around this teenage boy—this sharp, brittle boy—and holds him tight.

“I love you,” he says. “I love you so much. Your dad and I, we both do.”

Conor’s shoulders shake as Stiles holds him, and Stiles doesn’t want to know how much he’s suffered.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m going to get you back,” Stiles says. “I’m going to kill those fuckers, and nobody’s ever going to hurt you again.”

“Do it right, Tata,” Conor tells him, voice hitching, “and nobody will ever get the chance.”

The green light in the cave slowly fades, until Stiles is holding nothing at all.

 

***

 

Stiles Stilinski runs with wolves. Not as fast as wolves though, so that sucks. Also, he’s still a little weak, a little dizzy. On the plus side, his guts aren’t hanging out any more. So fuck the dizziness and the weakness and the cold. Stiles has got a future to change.

He heads for the Nemeton.

He can feel it again, prickling at the edges of his consciousness.

He’s going to make this.

He’s going to save everyone.

He’s going to fucking make it.

His blood freezes when he hears the sudden howl of a wolf.

 _Liam_.

Stiles keeps running.


	8. Chapter 8

Branches slap against his face, whip sharp. It’s too cold for Stiles to really feel it, but tears are streaming from his eyes. He thinks his feet are bleeding, but he doesn’t stop to check. From somewhere in the darkness he hears Liam howl again.

“Liam!” Can Liam even hear him? Can Derek? “Derek, don’t hurt him!”

His lungs are going to burst, he’s sure of it. He’s wheezing as well, and was it too much to expect that Conor could have sorted out that rapidly encroaching hypothermia as well as his gaping abdominal wound? Fucking mages, seriously. Who knows how their brains work? Even before the whole ADD thing, because, really, what are the chances Conor just inherited Stiles’s bone structure and unruly hair? This kid is going to give him _hell_ , and Stiles can’t fucking wait. But they need to live. First, they need to live.

Stiles skids down an incline, something sharp slicing his foot open. He keeps his balance with difficulty. Last thing he needs right now is a sprained ankle. Actually, the last thing he needs is for Derek to kill Liam and for everything else Conor said would happen, but he has to compartmentalize this shit, okay? Otherwise he’s going to go to pieces.

When Stiles was first diagnosed with ADD, his dad used to make him lists of things to do. Like, if he had to clean his room, John couldn’t just write ‘clean your room’ on his list of chores. He had to break it down so that Stiles didn’t get distracted by too many options. So sometimes ‘clean your room’ turned into a list of twenty jobs, from ‘put your Lego in the box’ to ‘close your closet doors’. The secret to tackling a big job was always to turn it into a lot of little small jobs. Lists are good. Lists keep him focussed.

Step one: stop Liam getting killed.

Step two: stop everyone else getting killed. Except those cult assholes. Stiles is going to make sure they die.

Step three: live happily ever after, and fuck anyone who tries to stop him.

It’s the kind of list that Stiles can really get behind.

He hears Liam’s howl again, and, a few seconds later, the answering roar.

Holy fuck.

There’s no mistaking that sound. It could strip the leaves off every tree in a twenty mile radius. It’s the roar of an angry alpha who’s about to rip the world apart.

It’s _Derek_.

 

***

 

“Derek!” Stiles screams into the night. “Derek!”

_Come and find me, Derek._

_Bring me home._

 

***

 

Stiles hits a solid wall of hot muscle.

It’s Boyd.

“Derek can’t hurt Liam. Tell him not to hurt Liam!”

And Stiles is so, so glad that it’s Boyd who finds him first, because the best thing about Boyd is that he never asks any fucking questions. Like, not ever. While anyone else would have been shaking Stiles by the shoulders to try and make answers fall out of him, Boyd just tilts his head back and howls, and Stiles really hopes that it’s the werewolf equivalent of _“Chill the fuck out, Derek.”_

“Okay, good,” Stiles says. “Okay.”

Now he’s stopped running, he starts shaking again.

Boyd rips his jacket off and wraps it around his shoulders. And then, oh, okay, he’s sweeping an arm underneath Stiles and this is a bridal carry. Bridal carry alert! Stiles feels like maybe he’ll complain about the indignity of it all later, but he’s wet and cold and covered in blood and Boyd’s just so fucking warm that Stiles shuts his mouth and tucks his face into his neck, and lets himself be rescued.

The trees flash past.

He’s so stupidly tired. Adrenalin dump? Cold? Near death experience? All three of them combining into some evil triumvirate?

It’s entirely possible that he passes out for a moment.

When he finally blinks his eyes open again, he’s being jostled into someone else’s arms.

“Derek!” His name is a sob and a prayer and an exultation all at once. He lifts a shaking hand to cup Derek’s cheek. Stubble scrapes his palm, and his thumb catches a tear. Derek’s eyes are shining alpha red. “Derek, hey.”

Derek sinks down to his knees on the forest floor, and Stiles goes with him. “ _Stiles_.”

“I’m okay,” Stiles whispers. “I’m okay.”

God. He wants to bask in this moment. Fucking live in it forever. There are no words in the world that can encompass this feeling. Derek’s here. Derek’s holding him. _Derek_.

He can’t say that Derek is his whole life. Not with Claudie, and Conor. Not with his dad and the pack. But Derek is in every part of his life. Some mornings when Stiles wakes up with Derek’s arms around him, he still can’t believe it ever happened. Still can’t believe that he’s allowed to love this man like this. To have him in his life at all. And the craziest part is when Derek looks back at him like he’s thinking the exact same thing.

Sometimes the universe gets things so right that it makes Stiles want to cry, it’s so amazing. Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world—Derek reading Claudie a bedtime story, or smiling at Stiles as he makes him a cup of tea, or sharing a quick kiss as easy as breathing—that Stiles is almost overcome.

“Stiles,” Derek whispers again. “God. Stiles.”

Stiles wants this moment to last forever, but it can’t. There’s still so much he has to do.

He turns his head and sees Liam for the first time. He’s on his back in the clearing, with Scott crouching over him. Scott’s wolfed out. He’s got a clawed hand curled around Liam’s throat. Liam looks petrified.

Allison is standing over them, a notched arrow pointing at Liam’s chest.

Stiles tugs on Derek’s shirt. “He saved me. Liam saved me.”

Scott growls, and loosens his grip enough for Liam to suck in a breath. He stays down though.

“Where—” Stiles feels a stab of panic, but before he can even finish the question Isaac is kneeling down beside them, holding Conor out toward him. Conor’s wrapped in a jacket. “Oh my god, hey. Hey, Conor. Have you met your Daddy, yet?”

Stiles takes Conor in his arms, and leans into Derek’s warmth.

Derek swallows, his eyes wide as the red fades. “Conor.”

Derek looks so young, like this. Holding a miracle like he’s not entirely sure what he did to deserve it, and Stiles wants to tell him: _you did_ _everything_. _Everything._  

Stiles wishes this moment could last forever, but the night isn’t over yet. The Nemeton is still hungry, and those assholes are still searching the woods for their sacrifice. And also hypothermia.

“Der,” he says, his breath hitching. “I’m _really_ fucking cold.”

 

***

 

Clothes first.

Boyd’s jacket is damp, so Derek pulls it off him. Then his wet, bloody shirt and track pants. He’s shaking so hard that it takes both Derek and Scott to get him into Scott’s jeans, and Stiles is so cold he can’t even stop and laugh at Scott’s Spongebob boxer briefs. Then he’s wearing Derek’s shirt, and his leather jacket, and Derek’s socks and boots, and Isaac’s scarf and Boyd’s woollen hat. And Conor is wrapped in Isaac’s jacket, and Scott’s as well now, and the wolves are standing around in various states of undress, and Stiles is starting to feel warm again in the first time in forever.

Clothes first, and introductions next.

“That’s Liam,” he tells Derek. “Der, he took my pain when I needed, and he helped me escape, okay?”

Derek’s eyes flash red.

Liam’s flash blue in return.

“He _helped_ me,” Stiles repeats.

Derek growls, and Stiles has no doubt that he remembers Liam’s scent from the night he was taken.

“He brought Conor back to you,” Stiles says, as Derek chafes warmth into his cold hands. “He brought him back to the pack.”

Liam still looks terrified, like he’s sure he’s going to have his throat torn out at any second. But that’s okay. He’ll figure out sooner or later that he’s safe. Right now it only matters that Stiles has stopped Derek from killing him.

He’s already changed the future, right?

Nothing is ever written in stone.

 

***

 

 

It’s midnight when they get back to the house. Which is a fucking mess, by the way. Like what? Nobody could pick this shit up off the floor? It takes Stiles a moment to realize it’s a sleeping bag, and a knapsack, and assorted bits of clothing, and why is someone camping on their living room floor? Oh, and that’s some sort of assault rifle propped up against the wall. An assault rifle? In a house with a four year old? What sort of bad parenting decisions has Derek been making while Stiles has been busy being kidnapped?

“Where’s Claudie?” Stiles asks as soon as Derek puts him down on the couch. “Where is she?”

It’s sort of a cluster fuck.

There’s a _lot_ going on.

Stiles is being buried under a pile of warm blankets, and a packet of chocolate chip cookies is being shoved under his nose, and Erica is there and she’s hugging him, and that is way more boob that Stiles is used to dealing with. And he cries when she calls him Batman, and what the fuck is that about?

Claudie shrieks when Lydia brings her downstairs, and burrows into Stiles’s side like a tick, and it’s really nice, except they’re still coming, and Stiles needs to know if Deaton’s improved the wards on the house or not, and he especially needs to know that this time he and Conor won’t join forces and Sleeping Beauty the entire pack.

And Scott’s got his best vet assistant face on, he’s cleaning Stiles’s bleeding feet and telling him not to worry, he’s safe now—

And Derek’s never ever letting his hand go again, and he’s rubbing his free hand over Stiles’s abdomen like he can’t believe he’s not bleeding to death—

And Liam is sitting slumped in the corner with Boyd and Erica glaring at him—

And Chris Argent just appears out of nowhere and picks up his assault rifle—of course it’s his—and inspects it, and gives Stiles a taciturn nod that makes him wish he was a little like a stoic action movie hero too—

And then Stiles’s dad is there, and first he’s holding Stiles so tight that he can’t even breathe, and then he’s holding Conor and rocking him gently and looking down at him like he’s the most amazingly beautiful thing ever, and not at all crusty and gross and still covered in packing grease or whatever the hell it is—

And pretty much everyone is crying and—

And Stiles really wants a shower. Like really. Oh god, so much—

“Stop!” he says over the noise. He pulls his feet up, and Scott drops the antiseptic lotion and swears when it spills all over the floor. “We need Deaton, _now_! Because they’re coming for us, and they’re powerful, and there’s still a damn good chance they can wake the Nemeton and kill us all!”

Claudie flinches back, eyes wide.

I’m sorry,” Stiles says, kissing the top of her head. “Tata’s sorry, sweetheart.” He’s crying again. Fuck. Why can’t he stop crying? “Der, please, we need to _go_. We need to _run_. Just until we can regroup, okay? But we can’t be here tonight. We _can’t_. We need to get away!”

Because Conor said they had a way to overpower an alpha.

He curls his fingers in Derek’s. “Derek, we have to go.”

Which is right when Alan Deaton appears, his forehead creased with worry but his voice as calm as usual. “I’m afraid,” he says, “that it’s too late for that.”

                

***

 

Okay, so maybe Stiles’s life _is_ a horror movie.

They’re stuck in the house with at least six hours to go until dawn, and there’s no way out. Like _literally_ no way. Erica and Isaac go nuts trying to get past the boundaries of the doors and windows. They’re growling and wolfed out, and snarling words that Claudie really shouldn’t be listening to, and there is no way out. It’s like there’s a force field or mountain ash around the entire house, except it’s keeping the humans in as well.

It’s a clever little trap. It let everyone walk right in before it slammed shut behind them. They were caught before they even knew it.

Chris and John keep to the edges of the room, going through the arsenal that Chris apparently feels the need to keep with him at all times. Good call. Stiles isn’t going to make any jokes about Chris compensating for anything when, frankly, he wishes the guy had _more_ guns right now.

“It’s very powerful magic,” Deaton says mildly as he sits on the coffee table and regards Stiles curiously.

Claudie is still huddled into Stiles’s side. He’s holding Conor as well, and notes the way that Deaton’s gaze drops to him.

“Theirs or ours, you mean?” Stiles asks.

Derek cuts a sharp look at him.

Deaton smiles slightly. “Yes, I realized a few days ago that the sleeping spell was yours. Your protective instinct.”

“And Conor’s magic.” Stiles strokes his fingertip along Conor’s cheek, and Conor’s nose wrinkles and his tiny fingers clench. “Is this us again?”

“I don’t think so,” Deaton says. “You instinct this time was to run.”

“Conor—” Stiles cuts himself off. Really, he’s not going to start any sentence with ‘Conor said’. That’s just going to confuse the fuck out of everyone and waste valuable time. “They have a way to overpower an alpha. What does that mean?”

Deaton’s brow furrows.

“What does it matter?” Derek asks. “Even if they kill me, the pack will keep fighting for you.”

“Yes,” Deaton says. “But a pack bond is a very powerful thing. To disrupt it, to _exploit_ it…” He’s silent for a moment. “It’s entirely possible to neutralize a pack through the pack bond. Your betas are connected to you, Derek. That connection is a source of strength, but it can be used against you all.” He glances over to Liam. “What do you know about what they’re planning?”

Liam is shivering. He’s still wearing his wet jeans and nothing else. “I d-don’t. They didn’t tell me.”

Still huffs. “Can someone get Liam some warm clothes, please? He saved me, okay? I’m getting pretty sick of repeating that, actually.”

“He also kidnapped you,” Derek growls.

Stiles holds his gaze. “Everyone deserves a second chance, Derek.”

“Not when they hurt you,” Derek growls.

Protectivewolf.

Stiles rubs a thumb over Derek’s knuckles. “If it wasn’t for Liam I would have died at midnight and they would have Conor right now.”

Well, that shuts Derek up, and sends Erica hurrying upstairs to get some clothes for Liam. When she gets back she flings them at Liam and, flushing, he gets changed in front of everyone.

Stiles tosses the bag of cookies toward him.

Liam catches them against his chest, looking surprised. Then he shoves three of them in his mouth at once, like he’s scared someone’s going to rip them away from him.

“How long were you with them?” Deaton asks him.

“Um…” Liam says around his mouthful of choc chips. “It was summer. Last summer. Just after I got… after I got bitten.”

“Do you know who bit you?” Deaton asks.

Liam’s eyes flash with temper. “I didn’t even know this was a _thing_!”

From behind him, Boyd gives a low growl.

Liam starts. Color rises in his cheeks, and he glares at the floor. Cowed, but not calmed.

Angrywolf.

Except most of that anger, Stiles figures, comes from fear.

He remembers when Scott was bitten. Remembers that first full moon, how Scott had almost killed him. And that was when Stiles had known what to expect. Well, kind of. He’d known in theory, thanks to a steady teenage diet of B-Grade horror flicks, but in practice… Nothing had prepared him for the bone chilling terror of that night. For the sickening realization that there wasn’t enough of Scott in that thing, that monster, to stop him from trying to rip Stiles apart.

Of course Liam’s eyes flash blue. There was no Derek Hale hanging around to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone when he turned. God. Even back when Derek had just been that glowering unfairly hot asshole who turned up everywhere like a bad smell… even then, he’d been protecting them. It’s just that Stiles, fifteen years old and dumb as hell, had taken a while to see it. Derek never had to help Scott. He’d done it because it was the right thing to do.

He’d done it because he was a good guy.

Stiles still can’t believe he never saw it from the start. He was so totally fucking blind in so many ways.

Liam’s still looking homicidal, but he’s also looking on the verge of tears.

Stiles bets he was a godsend to those evil fuckers. An angry out-of-control omega, not quite far enough gone to be totally feral, who was terrified of hurting anyone ever again. He bets Liam willingly dived into their chains. He bets all they had to promise him was that he’d never lose control again.

It’s six hours until dawn.

Six hours until night ends.

“You need to rest, Stiles,” Deaton says. “We’ll wake you when they come.”

 _When_ , not _if_.

And maybe they don’t need him for this part. Deaton’s got the magic angle covered, the pack has the claws and fangs angle covered, and Chris Argent and his dad are obviously the firepower. What’s Stiles except the fucking target? Story of his life.

Stiles opens his mouth, but what is there to say? He passes Conor to Derek, and gently shifts Claudie so she’s cuddling up against her Daddy as well. Stiles hauls himself to his stinging feet.

“I need a shower,” he says. “Don’t kill Liam while I’m gone.”

He limps upstairs.

 

***

 

The water is hot. It sluices over his skin, washing away the mud and the grime and the blood. Stiles washes his hair, and it feels so fucking nice to not be filthy. He’s still tired, almost swaying on his feet, but he’s _clean_ , and it makes a world of difference. He’s so tired he can hardly turn around when Derek joins him in the shower.

It’s not sexual. It _could_ be. God knows this shower has seen some pretty intense action in its time. Intense like Stiles should consider buying kneepads and a crash helmet. Stiles and slippery surfaces are not the best match, but luckily Derek has super reflexes and has never let Stiles try and smash his way through the tiles with his skull. But tonight the only heat is coming from the water.

Derek soaps up a sponge and washes him, and Stiles just folds himself into his embrace and lets it happen. He splays his fingers across his abdomen after Derek swipes the sponge across it. Not even a scar. Stiles will allow himself to be vainly pleased about that if he actually survives the night.

Derek leaves a trail of kisses along his shoulders.

They don’t talk, not under the spray, but every moment that passes makes Stiles feel a little more like himself again.

“Where’s Conor?” Stiles asks when he finally turns the tap off.

“With your dad.”

“Good," Stiles says. He stares at himself in the fogged up bathroom mirror. The circles around his eyes are as dark as sin. He grips the edge of the counter and rolls his aching shoulders. “Der?”

Derek raises his brows.

“Nobody walks into my fucking house and threatens my pack,” Stiles says. “If there’s a way to kill these assholes, we’re gonna find it.”

Derek curls his lip in a snarl of agreement.

This might be the first time since Thanksgiving that Stiles has actually felt equal to these assholes. He’s alive, he’s clean, and he’s got an alpha at his side and an entire fucking pack at his back.

Stiles pulls on clean clothes. Walks into the bedroom and picks up his baseball bat from beside the bed. Feels the familiar weight of it in his hand. Then, swinging the bat gently from side to side, he heads back down the stairs with Derek following.


	9. Chapter 9

Alan Deaton knows of exactly six different spells that can destroy a pack by targeting the alpha. He suspects there are more. Stiles doesn’t doubt it. Magic is kind of fucked up, really. There are way too many variables at play to anticipate them all, and it’s almost impossible to guard against a threat when they don’t know the specifics. Nevertheless, he and Deaton chalk a few wards up on the walls in the vain hope they’ll make a difference.

At one a.m. Stiles puts Claudie to sleep on a mattress in the basement, with Conor in a box beside her. He can’t help thinking of the way that Claudie came to them, in a cardboard box that appeared on his front doorstep one morning. If Stiles was anything like the mage, he’d tear a hole in time and space and shove his kids through it right now, but that’s not an option. He wishes it was.

He also can’t help thinking that, even though the house has been rebuilt, that this is the same basement that Derek’s entire family died in.

“You’ll be okay down here, growly girl,” he whispers to Claudie, and kisses her on the forehead.

Lydia is going to wait with them. Chris has given her a handgun, and Stiles knows she’s willing to use it. He just doesn’t know if, at this point, it will actually matter.

Claudie curls up in her comforter, fighting sleep. Stiles strokes her hair until her eyes close.

 _This_ , Stiles thinks. He was never prepared for this, for Claudie, for the way she barrelled into his life and lit up the corners he didn’t even know were empty. He was sixteen at the time—so not ready for a kid, but then, who is ever ready, really? Stiles had done what he’d always done. He’d rolled with the punches and, when he finally came up for air, somehow he and Claudie and Derek had been a _family_. Stiles had never expected it, but somehow it had been perfect.

Stiles leans down to kiss Claudie again, and then turns to Conor.

He’s clean now. He smells of talcum. His small fingers are curled up under his chin, like he’s a tiny little Mr. Burns, plotting evil. _Excellent_. Stiles runs a fingertip down his cheek, and Conor’s mouth twists.

“Hey, my amazing boy,” Stiles murmurs. “I won’t let them get you, remember? Tata won’t let them hurt you.” Tears well in his eyes when he thinks of what Conor told him in the cave. About stitches and tubes, and bleeding him every new moon. Rage fills him too, because fuck those assholes. They want blood? They’re going to drown in their own before they spill even a drop of Conor’s. “You’re gonna grow up here, Conor, with me and Daddy and Claudie, and you’re going to be _happy_.”

His Conor is not going to be the Conor from the cave. He’s not going to have those same sharp, jagged edges honed by fear and anger. His Conor is never going to think he’s not protected, that he’s not loved.

Stiles meets Lydia gaze. Her expression is grave. She knows there’s more than he’s saying. Of course she does. She’s a fucking genius. Later, Stiles thinks, he’ll tell her everything. But not now. He can’t look too deeply at the horror now, because he needs to feed his rage here, not his despair. And okay, sure, Stiles loves _Star Wars_. He knows that if he lets the hate flow through him, that way lies the dark side, blah blah blah. But also, screw that. No one fucks with his family.

Lydia reaches over and curls her fingers around his wrist. “Stiles. I won’t let anything happen to them, okay?”

Stiles nods.

She means it, but he’s still not convinced meaning it is enough. It’s what he always comes back to, isn’t it? A part of him will always be that eight-year-old kid, weak with crying, who doesn’t understand how his mom could be dead when he _needs_ her.

It didn’t make sense then and it doesn’t make sense now.

The cognitive dissonance of grief.

Of horror.

It’s probably why he had no problem believing in the supernatural. Nothing else in the world has to make any sense. Werewolves? Why the fuck not?

“ _A-a-a, a-a-a, byly sobie kotki dwa. A-a-a, kotki dwa, szarobure, szarobure obydwa_.” He leans down and presses a kiss to Conor’s cheek. “ _Ach, śpij, kochanie, jesli gwiazdke z nieba chcesz - dostaniesz_.”

 _There were once two little kittens…_ His throat hurts a little when he whispers the lullaby to Conor, and it’s his mother’s voice he hears: _Oh, sleep my darling. If you’d like a star from the sky I’ll give you one._

Except if either of them has the power to rip the stars from the sky it’s not Stiles, is it?

Conor’s so tiny, and so helpless.

He may also be the most powerful mage who’s ever existed in this reality.

Stiles kisses him again, and then checks the blanket is tucked tightly around him.

Tomorrow.

He can worry about how to raise a kid like Conor tomorrow.

He exchanges another glance with Lydia.

Because there _is_ going to be a tomorrow.

 

***

 

Stiles sits on the couch, his baseball bat resting across his knees. He rubs his abdomen a few times, when phantom pains flicker through him.

“So,” he says to the pack. “We kill them.”

He looks around, expecting at least a little bit of dissent. Because, come on, there’s usually someone he can rely on to remind him that his first impulses are generally not good ideas. He fixes his gaze on Scott first. Because yeah, Scott is always the one who sees the best in people. Even in murderous asshole people. And Scott looks serious, so serious he’s probably having a silent moral crisis right now, but he doesn’t object. Not even a little bit.

“Kiddo.”

Stiles twists his had to look at his dad.

“Why?” John asks. There’s no accusation there, just the question.

Because his dad knows him of course. Better than anyone. Better than Derek and Scott, maybe. And he knows Stiles is quick to anger. He knows Stiles can hold a grudge for years, and he has. Jimmy Grant from third grade? Stiles would totally run over Jimmy in his Jeep if he saw him crossing the street. Stiles had saved up for ages for that Batman, and that little bastard had broken it when he took it into school for show and tell. Stiles doesn’t care if Jimmy’s since joined the Peace Corps. Stiles is still owed his revenge, and he hasn’t forgotten.

But John also knows that this different. This is no a temper tantrum. This isn’t Stiles’s usual obsession with one-upmanship, with winning for the sake of it. This is anger that’s burned so hot it’s transformed into something entirely new. Something that’s now ice cold in his veins.

“Because Conor will survive the night,” Stiles tells him. “Even if we all die, Conor will survive, and they’ll hurt him for _years_. Cut him open every month, then stitch him up and do it all over again.”

There are worse things than dying quickly.

Derek growls. The sound is low, and dangerous. It’s also wavering right on the edge of despair.

Someone whines. Isaac. Of course it’s Isaac. Of all of the pack, it’s only Isaac who can even begin to understand what kind of horror Conor is facing. 

John holds Stiles’s gaze a moment longer, and then nods.

“Whatever magic they’re using,” Deaton says, “it’s important not to let them cast any more. If they have the means to disable the pack by attacking the alpha, we cannot allow them to use it.”

“Shoot first,” Chris Argent says.

“And ask questions later?” Stiles mutters.

“No,” Chris says, his voice level. “Shoot to kill.”

That’s more fucking like it.

 

***

 

When he was eleven, Stiles discovered religion. Well, he’d always known it was there, but neither of his parents was particularly religious so it wasn’t really a thing for him. But when he was eleven his dad was running for Sheriff, and someone suggested he should try and win over the church crowd. John hadn’t been comfortable with that level of hypocrisy, but he’d gone along to a meeting one night at the local Episcopal Church and taken Stiles with him. He’d talked to the church members about his campaign, and things had gone pretty well. Then Stiles had surprised him by asking if he could go to the youth group on Sunday.

Okay, so the thing was, one of the kids had told Stiles that they got to play all these cool games at youth group, and it was summer vacation and Scott was at his dad’s, and Stiles was lonely. So, hello Jebus.

So, Stiles was eleven when he discovered religion.

It didn’t take.

Maybe he was already too cynical and too sarcastic. Maybe he was already too aware of the gulf between these well-meaning people and people like himself. He liked their friendly little club, but he felt like a total imposter when they welcomed him into it. And he was pretty sure the Jesus statue could tell and was judging him.

He tried praying for a new bike, but nothing happened.

And then he felt bad because while he was praying for a new bike, one of the other kids was praying that his mom would get better from her breast cancer.

And then he felt bad for feeling angry when she did. It wasn’t fair that he was late to the game and hadn’t known prayer was an option for when _his_ mom was dying.

Just when he’d started to actually believe in God, it turned out he hated Him too.

Then he knocked over the Jesus statue and yelled at it and was asked not to come back.

And then he stopped believing in God because it was easier than hating Him.

Sometimes Stiles thinks that it would be nice to believe in something other than chaos. Magic might be real, but it’s never made him feel _safe_. Something he thinks it would be nice to feel protected in a world that’s too full of darkness. Sometimes he wishes he remembered how to pray.

If he did, he’d be doing it right now.

 

*** 

 

 

Chris and Allison move upstairs. Chris takes a position in Stiles and Derek’s bedroom. It’s on the corner, and has windows overlooking the front of the house, and the side. Alison takes the main bathroom, covering the back of the house. John stays downstairs, in the kitchen, also covering the back of the house and, more importantly, the door to the basement.

The wolves prowl restlessly.

Stiles watches the clock.

Four hours now until dawn, and of course they’ll come before then. They wouldn’t have trapped everyone inside the house if they didn’t intend to attack.

Deaton sits in the living room with Liam, questioning him about the cult.

Derek, prowling the house, stops in every now and then to glower at Liam. Liam shrinks back every time.

“He’s just a kid,” Stiles whispers when it happens again, tugging Derek away from the living room. They stand in the hallway, and Derek puts his arms around Stiles. Stiles holds him back, and looks over his shoulder toward the kitchen where his dad is rocking some terrifying looking gun, and looking like he knows how to use it as well.

Scott, on his own circuit of the house, brushes past them.

“I don’t like him,” Derek growls.

“Of course you don’t,” Stiles murmurs. “But he’s earned his second chance.”

The waiting is the worst thing, right?

Jesus. Why do people always say that? The waiting sucks balls, and not in the fun way, but it’s not the _worst_. It’s entirely possible that the worst is still coming, and it’s going to be more terrible than anything that’s ever happened in Stiles’s life before. The waiting might feel the worst right now but, in comparison, it could also be a fucking picnic.

Stiles leans back against the wall. Pale eggshell blue, because Derek had agreed in the end that white was too stark. This is the house they built. This is the house they painted. It’s the house they planned to grow their future in. It’s not their grave, and it’s not going to be. Impossible.

So the waiting sucks.

Stiles doesn’t know what he’s expecting.

Hooded figures melting out of the dark woods like something from a nightmare, maybe. Or, conversely, all of them piled into the Hyundai like they’re on their way to a family fun day or something.

When Stiles’s cell phone rings from somewhere in the living room, it seems so oddly out of place that for a moment Stiles actually has no idea it’s going to be them.

 

***

 

Stiles and Derek have this thing where they change each other’s ring tones to the most ludicrous things they can think of. Well, it’s Stiles’s thing. Derek just kind of lets it happen, and rarely retaliates. Mostly because he’s nowhere near as good at picking the best songs. Except last month, in a moment of inspired genius, he set Stiles’s ring tone to _Colour My World_ by Petula Clark. And it’s a little bit quirky, a little bit funny, and a lot ridiculously happy. Stiles loves it. It’s such an unlikely choice for a glowering sourwolf, but Stiles has caught him humming it a few times since.

It’s also an incredibly creepy song when it heralds the start of a nightmare.

 

***

 

Stiles picks up his phone from beside the TV, and slides his thumb across the screen to accept the call.

“Hello?”

“Stiles.” A chill runs through him when he hears that friendly voice. It’s Annie.

“What do you want?”

“You know what we want.” He can hear the smile in her voice. “Don’t be difficult, Stiles.”

“Don’t be difficult?” Stiles holds Derek’s gaze. “It’s like you don’t even know me.”

“Stiles.” She sounds a little reproachful.

“Well, excuse me for not wanting to hand my baby over to be tortured and sacrificed to the Nemeton.”

“Oh, but it’s for the greater good,” Annie says, and sounds like she actually means it.

“Um, it’s really not,” Stiles says. “And, even if it was, still fuck you.”

Look, because even if someone came back from the future and said that Conor was going to turn into the next Hitler or something, Stiles’s answer would be the same. Okay, so he did get a little caught up in that whole _Would you go back in time and kill baby Hitler_ argument that was a thing on Twitter a while ago. And no. Just no. Stiles wouldn’t go back and kill baby Hitler. Stiles would go back and steal baby Hitler, raise him in a nice family, and kick his ass if he showed even the slightest hint of being a dick.

Because there is nothing written in stone. There is no future that can’t be changed. And there is no child who doesn’t have the capacity to grow into a decent human being.

Stiles believes that.

And also because if Hitler wasn’t Hitler, someone else would be.

Stiles believes that too.

And he’s pretty sure Annie has no fucking business throwing around phrases like _for the greater good_. The thing with utilitarianism is that someone always loses. And when that someone is an infant, fuck it for a philosophy. Stiles is all about sacrificing himself for the greater good, but that’s because he’s an adult and he gets to make that choice. Nobody has the right to decide for anyone else.

And the greater good? Waking the Nemeton isn’t for the greater good. Annie and the others just want power. They’re not philosophers. They’re assholes.   

“I’m not giving you my baby,” he says, holding the phone tightly.

Derek’s hand is gripping his shoulder.

Stiles is aware of the rest of the pack gathering in the doorway.

Not his dad, though. His dad is still holding his position in the kitchen, and the Argents have remained upstairs. Good. Because this could be a diversion, right? Annie phones him while the rest of the cult attack. So good. Nobody is letting their guard down.

“Oh, honey,” Annie says. “I guess we’ll just need to come and take you, won’t we?”

“You can try,” Stiles tells her. “But you still won’t get near my son.”

There’s a moment of silence then, and Stiles realizes she’s figured it out.

“Oh,” he says. “Was he supposed to be born on the Nemeton? Yeah, you might have missed your window of opportunity there. I hope your little tree won’t be pissed about that.”

For the first time since he’s known her, she sounds almost annoyed. “He’ll still be a fine sacrifice. First the mage, and then the brat.”

Stiles bites back the urge to tell her she’s got them mixed up. Conor is the mage, and Stiles has always been a brat, so… But he’s not giving Annie anything. If they think he’s the mage, and they have to kill the mage first, then Stiles isn’t going to shift that target onto Conor.

“Why not just me?” he asks, and Derek digs his fingers into his shoulder. “Why not just sacrifice me?”

“You and your magic, and all your works,” Annie tells him. “The Nemeton needs it all.”

“It’s a stump,” Stiles says. “It doesn’t need anything except to rot.”

“It’s your choice, Stiles.” Annie’s voice is as sickly sweet as molasses. “You come to us, _with_ your baby, or we come and get you. And then your pack will suffer for it.”

“You know, you say that,” Stiles tells her, “but I don’t think you guys know exactly what you’re dealing with. Have you ever seen an angry alpha?”

She laughs. “Oh, honey, you have no idea what I’ve seen.”

Time to bluff.

“Thing is,” Stiles says, “I couldn’t use my magic before because I didn’t want to risk the pregnancy. And then, you know, those fucking runes. But now? You come for me, bitch, you even fucking try, and I will fucking _end_ you. I will burn the world before I let you put a finger on my son. Understand?”

For a moment there’s silence.

Stiles gazes around the room.

Deaton is watching him quietly. Liam is as wide-eyed and terrified as when he was first dragged here. Scott looks worried. Boyd looks as stoic as always, but his jaw’s set in a determined line. Erica already has her claws out, and Isaac’s eyes are shining gold.

And Derek…

Derek is wolfed out. His eyes blaze red. His fangs gleam when he curls his lip in a silent snarl.

If Stiles is going to burn the world—if he even _could_ —then so is Derek.

Annie hums. “Oh, honey. Maybe I’d actually believe you, if you hadn’t made just one little mistake.”

Stiles’s blood runs cold. “What mistake?”

“You’re in the pack too, Stiles.” She laughs again. “When we cripple your alpha, we cripple you too. You screwed up, honey. You should have fucked your wolf and walked away, but no, you had stick around, didn’t you? You had to be a part of the pack. And now you’re as bound to it as he is.”

Stiles’s can hardly hear her over the roaring sound in his skull.

“Make it easier on yourself,” Annie murmurs. “Bring the baby to the Nemeton, and at least everyone else will live.”

“I can’t do that,” Stiles says, his voice flat. “Leave him out of it and I’ll—”

Derek growls.

“Oh, is your puppy angry?” Annie asks, her voice dripping with fake concern. “And that’s no deal, Stiles. We need you both. So you’ll either come to us, or we’ll come to you. What’s it going to be?”

Derek pulls him into an embrace, and Stiles almost smiles.

Yeah, if it had just been him they wanted, then yeah, maybe he would have gone. Probably he would have. To save his kids? Absolutely he would have. But they want Conor too, and there is no way in hell Derek will let that happen.

Math is hard, right? If it were just him, Stiles would probably go, despite Derek. And maybe Stiles isn’t a good person either, because if he didn’t _know_ what they were going to do to Conor, if he actually thought it might be quick and painless, well...to save Derek and Claudie could he…?

Fuck. He can’t even finish that thought.

He can’t _choose_ , and fuck them for even putting these thoughts in his head.

So, he almost smiles.

“You really think my alpha’s going to let me walk out of here?” he asks.

“No,” Annie agrees, her voice softening. “Of course he won’t. So I guess we’ll see you soon, Stiles.”

She ends the call.


	10. Chapter 10

The moment the call ends, the lights go out and the house is plunged into darkness. Stiles’s face is illuminated briefly by the glow of his phone’s home screen—long enough to see that he’s apparently got no signal—and then that dies as well.

They thought of everything. He’ll give them that.

It’s the sort of magic that impresses the newbies, but really it’s just fucking with electromagnetic fields. Even Stiles can almost do it. Once, he shorted out Deaton’s microwave when he was standing next to it.

Well, it shorted out when he was there, and Stiles is at least eighty percent sure it wasn’t a coincidence. Seventy percent. Okay, forty percent. But no lower.

Stiles slides his phone into his pocket, and sits on the arm of the couch and taps his fingers along the grip of his baseball bat. The wolves start to prowl again, restless and on edge.

When he was a kid, Stiles never got the expression about shooting fish in a barrel. Like how did the fish get in the barrel in the first place? And why would anyone need to shoot them when they could just reach in and grab one? And wouldn’t the bullets just go through the barrel anyway and all the water would drain out?

“Jesus, Stiles,” his dad had said with a sigh and a shake of his head. He said most things to Stiles with a sigh and a shake of his head, actually. “It’s an _expression_.”

Well it was a dumb expression and it really wasn’t fair on the fish.

So whenever he heard that expression again, Stiles liked to imagine that the fish were actually piranhas, and they’d totally leap out of the barrel and eat the guy with the gun. Even though that thing about piranhas stripping a cow of flesh in under a minute was a lie, and people who got eaten by piranhas were either already dead or gravely injured anyway. And some piranhas were actually vegetarian. Most people didn’t know that about piranhas and, going by the looks on their faces, most people didn’t really care when Stiles tried to share the information.

Point was, who would shoot fish in a barrel?

What had the fish done to deserve that?

Stiles flexes his fingers and closes them around the grip of the bat.

He looks up sharply when Derek does.

Stiles can’t hear anything yet, but suddenly every wolf in the house is on high alert.

And then Stiles sees the flash of headlights through the trees as a car follows the curve of the road through the Preserve toward the house.

 

***

 

There are two cars, as it happens. The Hyundai, and a Mazda. Seriously, these people will go all out with the creepy hooded robes and then ruin the effect with fuel economical small family sedans?

Stiles really, really wishes he could find that funny.

 

***

 

A sharp crack of gunfire from the upstairs bedroom.

 _Chris_.

Did he get one? Stiles almost moves forward to look out the window again, but Derek grabs him by the arm and pulls him back.

“Footsteps,” Scott whispers to Stiles. “Five of them, I think.”

Stiles watches as the wolves turn their heads to follow the sounds he can’t.

Another gunshot.

Stiles looks to Scott in the darkness.

Scott shakes his head.

If they can’t get out of the house, why would bullets? But those assholes are going to have to drop that shield _Star Trek_ style to get in, aren’t they? Aren’t they?

Stiles tightens his grip on his bat and rolls his shoulders.

He’s got this. He’s got this. He’s—

He doesn’t fucking have this.

Every door and window in the house bursts inward suddenly on a rolling wave of dust and sound and retina-burning light, like outside the world has exploded.

 

***

 

Stiles can’t hear anything over the sudden shrieking sound in his skull. And he can’t see a damn thing. It’s like one of those flash bombs from the movies. Or from Chris Argent’s personal stash, probably. Stiles is blind, his ears ringing. He thinks he’s yelling for Derek, but if he is he can’t hear it.

He’s on the floor.

He squints and blinks, and he’s almost got his vision back, and then there’s something else too. Something seeping through the shattered living room window.

Smoke?

No. Not fucking smoke, please. Not in this house. Not with its history.

No, it’s more like mist? Or gas?

One by one, the lights in the house flicker back on like they’re welcoming these assholes inside.

Stiles tries to haul himself up onto his hands and knees. He sees the gas as it creeps over Erica, who’s closest to the window. Erica snarls, shaking her head to clear it still, but the gas doesn’t seem to do anything to her. It slithers over Boyd and Isaac as well.

Does nothing.

It coalesces then, into a serpentine shape, as though it’s searching for something. For someone. And Stiles instantly knows that this is the cult’s weapon against the alpha. Whatever that stuff is, it’s looking for Derek. Stiles yells Derek’s name again, but he still doesn’t know it Derek can hear him. Derek hauls himself up onto his knees, lips pulled back in a growl Stiles can’t hear. He shakes himself like a dog getting out of water.

“Derek!” Stiles yells, but Derek’s looking at Stiles. He’s not looking at the twisting tendril of blue smoke snaking over the floor.

Then it hits Derek, winds around his throat like rope, and he chokes.

And then all the wolves start choking.

And Stiles tries to scream again, but suddenly he’s choking too.

So that’s how you take down an alpha and his pack.

 

***

 

“You’re in my pack, Stiles,” Derek Hale said to him, and seriously? Scary fucking leather-jacket werewolf Derek Hale thought Stiles was in his pack? Was he suffering a concussion or was he just certifiably insane?

All that talk about pack was just some sort of alpha dick measuring thing, right? Call someone your pack and you got to boss them around? Stiles wanted no part of it. He was Scotty’s bro, and no Derek-come-lately got to claim him like a piece of lost property.

 “I’m more pack adjacent,” Stiles said, and was rewarded with a fear boner when Derek flashed him his most homicidal glare.

Murderywolf.

But also hotwolf.

It was very confusing.

“He is such an asshole,” Stiles had muttered to Scott later as they’d trudged home. “Such a fucking _asshole_.”

Scott had nodded miserably.

And then, months later, Derek had climbed through Stiles’s bedroom window on the night of the full moon. Stiles had known by then what pack was, and what it meant to Derek. Pack was family.

Stiles had shoved his chemistry notes off the bed. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing secret werewolf stuff while you hang out with your pack?”

Derek’s gaze had fallen on Claudie’s crib. “My pack is here.”

He’d just meant Claudie, right? Not Claudie and Stiles. No, not Stiles at all.

He’d been afraid of wanting it too much. And what had life ever showed Stiles except that if you wanted something too much, it just got taken away again?

That was the first night Derek kissed him.

Stole his breath right out of his lungs.

 

***

 

He’s choking.

Stiles claws at his throat as he tries to crawl toward the door. He needs to get to the kitchen, to the basement door. To Claudie and Conor, because he needs to protect them. He can’t even pull oxygen into his lungs, but he needs to get to his kids.

And there is someone standing in the living room doorway. Harris. It’s Harris, and he turns around and looks at Stiles and then just keeps walking, like Stiles is _nothing_.

Stiles would sob, if he had the breath for it. 

Thin fingers card through Stiles’s hair and his heart freezes. The fingers clench into his fist, and pull his head back.

“Oh, honey,” Annie says with a smile, bending down over him. “What happened to that fight you were going to give us?”

She hauls him up onto his knees.

Stiles’s face is wet with tears. Derek’s lying on the floor. Deaton too. And Liam…

Liam’s _not_ pack.

He’s in a defensive crouch, eyes flashing, teeth bared, and claws out.

Annie looks at him and sighs. “Such a disappointment, Liam.”

Liam growls and lunges at her.

The short, sharp pop of a gunshot.

Such an undramatic sound, really.

Liam crashes to the floor, howling.

The man in the doorway behind Annie holsters his gun.

Liam writhes. He’s been hit in the shoulder. Stiles can see the black crawling up the corded veins in his neck. Wolfsbane.

Oh Jesus.

They’re all going to die then.

Annie smiles at his tears. “You should have come quietly when we gave you the chance, mage.”

Behind her, a werewolf roars—the sound is so unexpected, so full of anger, and so _loud_ , that Stiles’s heart skips a beat—and something heavy in the air seems to suddenly shatter into a million pieces. The pressure on Stiles’s chest vanishes in an instant, and he sucks in a deep breath.

 _Free_.

There’s a blur of motion, and the man with the gun hits the wall. A dark spray of arterial blood paints the curtains as Erica tears his throat out.

It takes _seconds_.

There is nothing fucking sweeter than seeing the look on Annie’s face when she realizes the wolves aren’t as incapacitated as she thought. Erica and Boyd race out of the living room, and Stiles hears screaming from further inside the house as they find their prey.

Then he hears footsteps pounding on the steps, and shots fired.

His pack is alive. His pack is fighting back.

And then Stiles is on his feet, his arm extended, his fingers digging into Annie’s throat. He might not have claws, but he’d rip her trachea right out if he could. He can, probably. She’s choking and gasping now, like Stiles was a moment ago. Her mouth opens and shuts, and Stiles is going to be so disappointed—but not surprised, honestly, because she’s a walking fucking cliché—if she tries the whole _No, this is impossible!_ thwarted villain shtick. Stiles eats impossible for breakfast.

Annie’s panicked gaze falls on Derek. The weird blue smoke is still wrapped around his throat. He’s still struggling for breath.

Annie’s lack of understanding twists her entire face up.

So does her naked fear.

“Yeah, yeah, you targeted the alpha,” Stiles says, “and you can’t possibly imagine where you went wrong.” He meets Scott’s gaze over her shoulder. Scott’s wolfed out, eyes flashing red. His claws are out. His rage-filled roar has reverted to a long, rumbling growl. It warms the cockles of Stiles’s heart, okay? Warms the fucking cockles. Stiles gives Annie his best faux-sweet smile. “Aw, _honey_ , didn’t you do your research? This pack has _two_ alphas.”

 

***

 

Stiles isn’t a merciful guy. And he’s not about to make any apologies for that. Derek is still choking on the floor when Chris Argent bursts into the living room brandishing his assault rifle.

Stiles points at his shoulder holster. “Handgun. Now.”

He can smell the magic coming off Annie now he’s this close to her. He knows that she’s the one. She’s the one who cast this spell. And, even if she wasn’t, fuck it. She’s earned this.

He takes the gun, jams the barrel up against her temple, and puts a bullet in her brain.

Doesn’t even flinch when she drops.

On the floor, Derek pulls in a rasping, shuddering breath at last.

Stiles drops the gun, his heart pounding. “Goddamn it. We’re gonna have to repaint the walls.”  

 

***

 

There is more blood in his house that Stiles is comfortable dealing with. Annie and one guy are dead in the living room. A second woman has her throat torn out in the hall. A third man is slumped against the kitchen counter with a bullet in his skull. Harris made it as far as the basement steps before Boyd caught him. Stiles can really only identify him by those ugly glasses that are lying broken on the basement floor.

Scott and Isaac help Derek upstairs. He’s still weak from the effects of the spell. So is everyone really, but Derek is the worst. It targeted him, after all.

Stiles follows them upstairs, holding a squirming Claudie. He keeps the comforter pulled over her face in case she tries to look. He doesn’t want her to see the blood. He puts her down on the bed beside Derek, and she curls into him and holds tight. She buries her face into the crook of his neck.

Scott pulls Stiles into a hug.

“Way to go, Scotty,” Stiles says, his voice hitching. “You got us on our feet again.”

“It’s never felt like that before,” Scott says, wide-eyed. “The alpha power. It’s never felt so strong.”

Because until that moment in the living room he’s always shared it with Derek. The alpha power, and the strength and loyalty of the beta wolves. It’s not supposed to work like that, but it does, because Stiles had refused to chose between them.

“I know,” Stiles says.

“I was just so angry, you know? Just screaming at everyone to get the fuck up and _fight_.”

“You did good.” Stiles hugs him back tightly. Scott’s shaking a little. They both tense when, from downstairs, they hear Liam scream. It’s a scream Stiles has heard more often than he likes to admit: Deaton is burning out the wolfsbane. It sounds horrific, but by the time it’s echoed away Liam will already be healing.

Scott releases him, then gives Isaac a hug too. It’s a little less bromantic than the one Stiles got. It’s the sort of desperate OMG-we-almost-died-and-now-we-must-have-sex hug that Stiles is familiar with himself. Because fuck Beacon Hills, seriously.

Lydia has followed them upstairs. She sets Conor down on Derek’s chest, and Derek lifts a shaking arm to hold him there gently.

Stiles swallows around the sudden knot in his throat when he look at them: his family. Then he runs a hand through his hair. “Okay, guess I’d better get down there and help clean up, right? Do we even have enough bleach in the house for this?”

Scott makes a face.

Isaac snorts.

Lydia huffs.

“What?”

“Stiles,” Scott says, in that special tone of voice he uses when Stiles is being a complete idiot. “Get on the bed with Derek and your kids, and don’t even think about moving.”

Stiles doesn’t need to be told twice.

 

***

 

“Oh, oh, if it's a boy, what about Luke?”

Derek had given him the side eye. “Luke, because you like the name, or Luke because of Luke Skywalker?”

Stiles rubbed his abdomen. He wasn’t showing yet, but his abs were already vanishing. He’d totally worked hard on those too, dammit. Because sleeping next to a naked Derek Hale every night? That was enough to make a guy wonder if maybe he should cut back on the curly fries and go jogging. Or at least start seriously thinking about it. No need to go crazy or anything.

“Can’t it be for both of those reasons?” Stiles asked, and went back to his list. “What about Lando?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Derek muttered, and threw a pillow at him.

It turned into a wrestling match, and then a make out session, and then the best fuck Stiles has gotten in forever. Well, in days. Well, since that morning.

Later, Stiles traced circles on Derek’s chest with his finger. “What about Conor?”

“Is that some Star Wars character I’m not aware of?” Derek asked him.

“No,” Stiles said, because Derek probably only meant the movies, right? And not the short stories in the _Adventure Journal_ volumes? Or the _Force Heretic_ trilogy of novels. Anyway, they were only really minor characters, and who would even know such a thing? Only a dedicated contributor to the Star Wars wiki, that’s who. And Stiles hadn’t logged on in years. Well, in months. Okay, in days. Whatever.

Derek raised his eyebrows.

“No!” Stiles lied, jabbing Derek in the ribs. “Anyway, that’s not where I got it from!”

“I knew it!” Derek exclaimed.

“Shut up!” Stiles laughed. “No, listen. Seriously, listen. Because Conor means brave and wise, okay? But it also means dog lover or wolf lover.”

Derek’s eyebrows did something complicated. “Dog lover?”

“We’re going the with alternate wolf lover,” Stiles told him. “And in a totally bestiality-free way.”

Derek was silent for a long time. Then he smiled. “Yeah, I like Conor.”

Stiles settled down against his side. “Yeah. Conor Obi-Wan Stilinksi-Hale. That’ll work.”

“I want a divorce,” Derek muttered.

 

***

 

They lie awake for hours.

Stiles is more tired than he’s ever been in his life, but he doesn’t want to miss a moment of this. Him and Derek, and Claudie and Conor. He wants to stay awake forever.

A part of him can’t even believe he’s alive.

That everyone who matters to him is okay.

His dad. His pack. His children. _Derek_.

There aren’t any words in the world that can even begin to approach encompassing what Stiles is feeling. There are touches though. There are linked fingers and there are tears, and there are gentle kisses that bring in the dawn.

Conor wakes up crying.

“He’s hungry,” Stiles says. “Is he hungry?”

“I’ll go and make up a bottle,” Derek murmurs. He gently bundles Conor over to Stiles, then shifts Claudie so he can get up off the bed. Stiles sits up, and shuffles back so he’s leaning against the headboard. He cradles Conor in his arms, and Conor cries.

Claudie wakes up snuffling. She snuggles up against Stiles and stares down at Conor with a frown on her face.

“What do you think, Claudie?” Stiles asks her.

She wrinkles her nose. “Is he going to cry all the time?”

“Not all the time,” Stiles says. “But probably a lot of the time. It’s what babies do.”

“Did I?”

“A little bit,” Stiles says. But she wasn’t a newborn when she arrived. She was about nine months old. She didn’t cry much at all. She just said “buh!” a lot and dribbled on things.

“Tata?” Claudie’s bottom lip trembles. “Are the scary people going to come back?”

“No,” Stiles says. “No, they’re gone and they’re not coming back.”

Claudie nods seriously. “Because Uncle Boyd killed them.”

Shit. The guy on the basement steps. Claudie saw that.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, keeping his voice even. “And I bet that was scary, but they were going to do very bad things, and nobody gets to do bad things to you and Conor, okay?”

“Okay,” Claudie says, and seems satisfied with that answer.

Derek returns with the bottle, and watches avidly while Stiles tries to get Conor to feed.

“Come on, kiddo,” Stiles says. “You can bend space and time but you can’t figure out how to do this?”

Conor twists his mouth up and finally latches on.

“That’s my clever boy,” Stiles says. “My clever little Conor Scott Stilinksi-Hale.”

Derek catches his gaze and smiles.

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “That’ll work.”


	11. Chapter 11

It’s cold in the Preserve.

A cold, gray day. There’s a fog rolling through the woods, pooling in the dips and hollows of the ground. Stiles has almost tripped over three times so far, but Derek has caught him every time. Claudie is skipping along in front of them, stopping every now and then to sniff at some scent she catches on the breeze, and collecting interesting rocks and twigs she finds. She is obviously part bowerbird.

Connor is strapped to the carrier on Derek’s chest. He’s wearing at least three different pairs of socks, mittens, a fuzzy hat, and so many layers of clothing that Stiles might have accidentally mummified him. He also fell asleep before they even got out of the house, and only woke up briefly once to spit up in the carrier and down Derek’s chest.

It was party gross, and mostly hilarious.

A crow flies overhead, and settles briefly in the naked branches of a tree. Claudie screeches in excitement, and it flies away again.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Derek asks as they get closer.

“Totally,” Stiles says, with more conviction than he actually feels.

But a tree is just a tree.

A stump is just a stump.

The Nemeton isn’t _evil_. Annie and the others might have been intending to use it for that, but it’s…what was the word his spark used? Benign. The Nemeton itself is benign.

That’s the reason for their visit today.

Stiles needs to not be afraid of it.

When they reach the clearing, Stiles is struck again by the size of the stump. It’s massive. He could lay on it and…

And have his guts ripped open by hooded people with huge motherfucking knives.

Derek put a hand on the small of his back. “You don’t have to.”

“Kinda do,” Stiles mutters. He turns toward Derek and fiddles with the clips on the carrier. He lifts Conor out and holds him carefully. “You and Claudie go and do wolfy things nearby. Me and Conor are going to chill with the tree.”

Derek keeps a watchful eye on them as he heads with Claudie into the tree line.

Stiles approaches the Nemeton.

“Conor, this is the Nemeton,” he says, and then, to be polite: “Nemeton, this is Conor.”

A breath of wind rustles though the surrounding trees, which might be an answer. Or just wind. It’s difficult to know.

“You’re broken, tree,” Stiles tells it. “You’re supposed to have your roots in the earth and your trunk in the world, and your branches in the heavens, remember? You’re out of balance.”

He cautiously sits down on the stump, cradling Conor.

Conor opens his eyes.

He doesn’t have his Daddy’s eyes, like Stiles had imagined once. He has Stiles’s eyes. Dark amber. The colour of tree resin. Stiles doesn’t know if that means anything or not.

“You’re not evil,” Stiles tells the tree. “But you’re broken.”

He sets Conor down on the stump, and Conor blinks up at the sky. Stiles shifts and sits beside him, cross-legged.

“So here we are, tree,” he says. “A spark and a mage, sitting here with you. Because guess what? This is my pack’s territory, and I guess that makes you my problem. So me and Conor, we’re going to come and visit you and keep an eye on you. You’re our tree now.”

Conor waves his mittens around.

Stiles closes his eyes and breathes in deeply. He holds it for a moment, then exhales.

He’s not sure if he can feel the Nemeton or not. He imagines he can. He imagines it’s buzzing slightly in his consciousness, the way it was when he was still pregnant with Conor. But maybe that’s all it is this time: his imagination. Like how is he supposed to tell?

He hears Claudie shriek with laughter from somewhere close by, and opens his eyes. He smiles down at Conor, then blinks.

Yeah.

And maybe he’s imagining the faint green glow in the rough, cracked surface of the stump like it’s being lit up from below, and the smell of ozone in the air.

It doesn’t scare him though.

It’s just power. It’s no more good or evil than the wind, or the sunlight, or the tides. It just _is_.

Conor gazes up at him, amber eyes bright.

“It’s our tree now,” Stiles tells him. “And we’re going to look after it.”

 

***

 

By the time they make it back to the house, it’s almost lunchtime. John’s cruiser is pulling in just as they arrive.

“Grandpa!” Claudie yells, and races forward to launch herself at him before he’s even out of the car. “Merry Christmas, Grandpa!”

John swings her up into his arms. “Merry Christmas, Claudie.”

“Jesus, Dad, is that blood on your uniform?” Stiles asks.

John gives a guilty little start as he notices the few spatters on his trouser leg. “It’s not mine, I swear. Things got a little heated on a domestic callout earlier on.”

Stiles grouses, but what can he do, really? He knows his Dad only took a Christmas Day shift so that Derek could spend his first Christmas at home with Conor. Derek’s paying him back by working New Year’s Eve. Stiles is okay with that. Please. He’ll totally be in bed by midnight anyway. Way before midnight.

“You’d better be staying for the whole of lunch!” Stiles tells him.

John pats his radio. “As long as this thing stays quiet, I’m all yours.”

They head inside.

They house is already full, just like it was on Thanksgiving. Stiles is personally hoping for less of a nightmarish holiday this time.

As soon as John puts her down, Claudie tugs him by the hand and drags him into the living room. “Presents, Grandpa! We have to do presents!”

“What?” John twists his head to look over his shoulder at Stiles and Derek. “I told you not to wait for me!”

“Please, like we’d open them without you,” Stiles scoffs.

Scott and Isaac and Allison are crowded onto the couch. Melissa, Scott’s mom, is pretending not to notice whenever Scott forgets she’s there and reaches across Allison to touch Isaac.

Boyd is sitting cross-legged on the floor with Erica in his lap.

Lydia has commandeered the armchair closest to the fireplace. Deaton is in the one beside her, and he’s wearing a Christmas sweater. It has reindeer on it, and it’s incredibly ugly. Stiles kind of wants to ask if the ugliness is intentional, but he doesn’t, in case it isn’t.

Liam is sitting on the floor in front of the couch, as close as he can get to Scott without actually climbing up his leg. He’s bonded much better with Scott than he has Derek, even though Derek grudgingly gave him a room in the house. It’s just that he’s half-convinced that Derek still wants to kill him, no matter how many times Stiles has tried to assure him that no, that’s just Derek’s face.

But Scott and Liam are a good match. Scott’s too good natured to snarl back when Liam’s frustration and temper gets the better of him at times, and it’s total credit to Scott’s patience that it’s a full moon tonight and Liam doesn’t look like an addict trying to scratch his own way out of his skin. Scott thinks he’s even ready to run with the pack tonight.  

“Grandpa, look at all the presents!” Claudie exclaims, drawing John over to the tree.

It’s true, there are a lot of presents. They decided on a Secret Santa thing so that nobody ended up buying sixty gazillion gifts they couldn’t afford, but they didn’t include Claudie and Conor in that. So most of the presents are actually for the kids. It’s pointless, really. Conor is too little to know what the hell is going on, and Claudie has turned into such an avaricious little monster this Christmas that sixty gazillion presents wouldn’t even touch the sides of her sense of entitlement.

Next year they’re going to put a limit on gifts for the kids. No way is Stiles letting Claudie turn into Veruca Salt. 

Stiles bites back a sigh and wonders if this is what it feels like to be a grown up. Then he smirks when he sees Isaac’s hand on Allison’s knee.

“Oh, hey,” he says innocently. “Ally, I think I hear your dad’s car.”

Isaac almost dives off the couch.

“Nope, sorry,” Stiles says. “But Claudie, we really do have to wait for Mr. Argent as well.”

Claudie looks at him like he’s the literal Grinch.

“Oh my god, we know!” Erica exclaims as Isaac put as much space between him and Allison on the couch as he can. "We all _know_ , including Allison’s dad.”

“Wh-what?” Isaac asks, at exactly the same time Scott says, “Um, Mom?”

“I have eyes, Scott,” Melissa says. “And so does Chris.”

Scott’s jaw drops. Isaac turns red. Allison just gives a dimpled smile, and shrugs.

“Awkward,” Stiles stage whispers.

“What is?” Claudie demands.

Derek clears his throat. “Claudie, why don’t you open just _one_ present?”

Claudie lights up, and dives toward the stack of gifts.

Stiles passes Conor over to his dad, then goes to stand beside Derek. He puts an arm around his waist. “This is why we’re so perfect together, you know?”

Derek raises his eyebrows. “Why?”

“I totally bring up inappropriate things in front of our children, and you distract them. It’s perfect.”

“It would probably be more perfect if you didn’t bring inappropriate things up in the first place,” Derek suggests.

“Sure,” Stiles agrees. “But what can you do?”

“Mmm.” Derek kisses him. “What can you do?”

 

***

 

Stiles sits out Pictionary, claiming he has to change Conor. It’s not a total lie. Conor does need changing, but Stiles is also still feeling a little skittish about Pictionary because of Thanksgiving. So he hurries upstairs with Conor before anyone can call him on it, and heads for the nursery. When he’s done he sets Conor in his crib and then sits himself in the armchair, and looks at the mural that Isaac repainted.

It’s Red and the wolf again, holding hands again. Except this time there’s a house hidden in the pretty woods behind them. It’s the house that Stiles is sitting in right now. And Red’s not wearing a dress anymore. Red’s in jeans and a hoodie. The first time he saw it Stiles laughed and high-fived Isaac. But now he’s overcome with a quiet happiness that’s so profound it makes his throat ache and his eyes sting.

Fucking Isaac. Making him cry on Christmas day.

Downstairs he can hear laughter, and, perversely, that just makes him want to cry even more. He shoots a narrow look at Conor’s crib. “I thought all this hormonal bullshit was supposed to stop once you were out of me.”

“And I thought you were supposed to stop swearing around the kids,” Derek says archly from the doorway.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Der!” Stiles clutches his chest. “You scared the hell out of me!”

Derek steps into the nursery and holds a hand out to Stiles. Stiles takes it, and lets Derek pull him to his feet and draw him out into the hallway. At the top of the stairs Stiles pauses, and Derek looks back at him.

For just a moment Stiles _listens_.

He might not have wolf hearing, or anything approaching it, but this is good. He hears a burst of laughter from the living room, and then Erica’s evil cackle.

“Aunty Lydia! Aunty Lydia, look at me!” Claudie cries out, her voice high-pitched with delight. Stiles has no doubt that she’s twirling around in the dress Lydia bought her.

“It’s _Monnalisa_ , Stiles,” Lydia had said pointedly when Claudie had unwrapped it and layers of tulle had exploded from the wrapping paper.

Stiles had schooled his expression way too late. “It’s very nice?”

Well Claudie obviously loves it. It’s lucky she has Lydia in her life, probably, or she’d just be wearing plaid and denim for the rest of her life. Or tiny leather jackets and aviator sunglasses. Actually, Claudie could totally rock that look.

A figure darts out of the living room and slips into the kitchen. It’s Melissa. She doesn’t look up to see them standing at the top of the stairs. A moment later John follows her, smiling, and Stiles hears the fridge opening and the clink of glasses.

“No!” Isaac exclaims suddenly. “No, it’s a rocket ship! I mean, look, it’s _obvious_!”

Pictionary is a very divisive game.

“Dude, that doesn’t look like a rocket,” Scott laughs. “That looks like—”

He’s cut off suddenly, and the room erupts into laughter again.

“What?” Claudie demands eagerly. “What does it look like?”

Stiles exchanges a grin with Derek. They can guess.

“Ready to face the crowd again?” Derek asks him.

Stiles considers that for a moment, and then his grin grows. “Actually, no.”

He pulls Derek back toward their bedroom.

 

***

 

Sometimes sex with Derek is hot and messy and fun. Sometimes it’s hard and fast and awesome. And sometimes, like today, it’s slow and gentle and almost holy. Every touch feels like a revelation, the unveiling of a secret.

And Jesus, when Stiles finally straddles Derek and eases himself down onto his dick, it’s as much the look of wonder on Derek’s face as the sensation of being filled that has Stiles almost coming right there. Then Derek’s hands are curling around his hips, and he’s easing Stiles into a gentle, undulating rhythm.

Stiles leans down and Derek lifts his face for a kiss. Stiles splays his hand over Derek’s heart, his fingers trembling.

“Derek,” he whispers.

“I love you,” Derek whispers back, rocking into him, his breath hot against Stiles’s lips.

“Love you,” Stiles echoes.

Just tiny little words, but they grow and stretch and somehow fill the entire world.

 

***

Hours later, Stiles is rugged up against the cold, and sitting on the porch steps with Lydia and Allison while they wait for moonrise. Conor is awake, and nestled in Stiles’s arms. John had to head back to work. So did Melissa. Deaton had to go to the clinic and feed the animals, and Chris has left as well. He made some lame excuse about having to urgently email a supplier, but Stiles figures he’s never going to be comfortable in a bunch of wolves around full moon. Especially when two of those wolves are doing unspeakable things his daughter, right?

The wolves are pacing the yard restlessly. Erica is bouncing up and down on her heels. Even Boyd looks a little uncomfortable in his skin, and that’s saying something.

“Oh,” Allison says at last, her voice soft with wonder. “I _love_ this part.”

Stiles watches as a long look passes between Derek and Scott and then, right on cue, they both drop their heads back and _howl_. The betas join in, and it’s a chorus. A pleasurable chill runs down Stiles’s spine, and he smiles down at Conor. Conor’s eyes are wide and his mouth is twisting.

_What the—?_

“That’s our wolves, kiddo,” Stiles tells him. “That’s your Daddy and your Uncle Scotty and the pack.”

Conor’s face screws up, and for a second Stiles thinks he’s going to start crying, but then he settles again and curls his mitten around Stiles’s index finger. Stiles is so caught up in studying every tiny expression he makes that he doesn’t even realize Derek’s approached him until he’s nuzzling into his throat.

Derek’s wolfed out. He’s hairy and fanged, and his face is doing that weird Neanderthal thing. Except Neanderthals probably had eyebrows. Stiles has yet to figure out where they go. Like, it’s a valid question. Derek’s eyebrows are at least ninety-three percent of his human facial expressions. Stiles has done the math. When they’re gone, they’re _missed_ , okay?

Derek huffs into Stiles’s throat and then turns his attention to Conor.

And if anything should freak Conor out, this is it, right?

Except why should anything freak Conor out?

He’s a baby. He doesn’t know werewolves are supposed to be scary. Or mythological. His own toes as probably just as amazing and astonishing to him as anything supernatural is. 

Derek snuffles, and Conor screws his face up. Then he blinks up at Derek when Derek leans back, and curls his hands under his chin again.

Derek gives a pleased chuff, and Conor kicks his feet out.

Claudie’s next in line to scent Stiles and Conor. Then she burrows against Stiles while the rest of the pack comes to scent Conor. Derek is on edge when Liam leans in close, but Stiles has been watching Liam is well, and his control is surprisingly good, okay? Also, he’s so terrified of Derek and so eager to please Scott that Stiles doubts there’s any power in the world that could compel him to harm Conor.

And he was the first person who ever held Conor, wasn’t he? He’s the one who brought him safely into the world.

Conor wriggles as Liam scents him, and then everyone’s done.

Derek howls again, Scott answers, and then the pack is racing off into the woods to run under the light of the full moon. A part of Stiles wishes he could go with them, and be a part of that moonlit world, just once.

“Ugh,” Stiles says. “Great. I’m a full moon widow, and I’m stuck in the girls’ club.” He catches Lydia’s look. “Not that the girls’ club isn’t _awesome_.”

She rolls her eyes and inspects her fingernails. “Please. If anyone should be annoyed at being sidelined on full moon, it’s me. I don’t even have the benefit of a hot werewolf sleeping with me to make up for it.” She raises her eyebrows at Allison. “Or two of them.”

Allison smiles proudly. And why the hell wouldn’t she? She’s living the goddamned dream.

“So, speaking of that,” Stiles says. “How exactly does it all work?”

Allison’s smile grows. “Well, Stiles, when a boy and a girl and a boy love each other very much--”

“I was actually hoping for the NC-17 rated version,” Stiles tells her. “I was given to understand that being in the girls’ club would mean we’d talk a lot about our sex lives.”

“Fine,” Allison challenges. “You first.”

Dammit.

Lydia, laughing, climbs to her feet and holds out her arms for Conor. Stiles bundles him over and stands up as well.

“Okay,” Lydia says. “We’ve got a few hours until they get back, and there’s a bottle of Moscato inside with our names on it. You two go and get it, and I’ll put Conor to bed.”

Stiles hesitates.

“What?” Lydia asks. “You’re bottle feeding him, Stiles. And half a glass of bubbles isn’t going to knock you on your ass.”

Allison puts a hand on his arm. “The pack’s right here, Stiles. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Right,” he says, drawing a deep breath of cold air. “Okay, Moscato it is.”

He’s fine. Conor’s fine.

Nothing’s going to happen.

“Lydia?” he asks as he follows her inside. “What exactly is Moscato?”

“Stiles,” she says imperiously. “I have _so_ much to teach you.”

 

***

 

It turns out that half a glass of Moscato is exactly enough to put Stiles on his ass. Right on his ass in Derek’s lap when the pack finally gets back.

“Merry Christmas, Der,” he says, and kisses him.

“Merry Christmas, Stiles.”

“Now ravish me in front of the Christmas tree!” Stiles demands.

Derek raises his eyebrows. “Can we wait until everyone else goes to bed first?”

Stiles shrugs, and beams around at the startled pack. “Your call, Der. Your call.”


	12. Chapter 12

_Three years later._

 

Stiles is a cop’s kid, and a cop’s husband. Sometimes people give him weird looks when he says that, and he bursts out laughing and promises it’s not the same cop. Because _ew_. But his whole life he’s known he could get the call.

His phone rings at three in the morning.

“Stiles?”

“Dad?” he mumbles into his phone.

“Kiddo, don’t panic—”

Too fucking late. Stiles is already stumbling out of bed, pulling on his jeans, fumbling with his phone, and where the fuck are his keys… and his heart is trying to beat its way out of his chest, and _oh god oh god oh god_ …

“Stiles!” his dad barks. “Derek is fine, but you need to get to the hospital, okay?”

“What…” Stiles can’t breathe. “What happened?”

“I don’t exactly have the full story yet,” John says. “But he’s okay, Stiles. He’s okay, and the doctor says he should regain consciousness shortly.”

Unconscious? What the fuck?

“Stiles, I’m sending Parrish out to get you. Don’t you wrap your Jeep around a tree trying to get here.”

“No.” Stiles tugs a shirt over his head. “I’ll get…I’ll get Liam to drive.”

Liam’s being staying with them for the summer while he’s home from his freshman year of college. He and Derek are building an extension to the deck.

“Stiles, he’s _okay_.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you said.”

“But you’re not listening, kid. Take a breath for me.”

Stiles obeys, and holds it for a moment. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, we’ll be there soon.”

He stumbles out of the bedroom, and almost trips over Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan really should learn not to sleep in doorways. The dog’s tags jingle on her collar as she lumbers away.

Stiles heads for the stairs.

And _shit_.

He can’t leave the kids home alone. He’s seen that movie, and it was a terrible example of parenting.

“Liam?” he calls, and raps on Liam’s bedroom door. “Liam?”

Liam wrenches the door open, his face creased with worry. He must be able to hear Stiles’s frantic heartbeat. “What’s going on?”

“Derek’s in the hospital,” Stiles says, and how is his voice even so calm? “Can you drive me?”

“Yeah. Is he…?”

“Dad says he’s okay,” Stiles says.

Relief washes over Liam’s face.

“Claudie?” Stiles calls, heading for her room. “Claudie, you need to wake up, growly girl.”

Five minutes later he’s bundling his sleepy pajama-clad kids into the Camaro.

“Is Daddy okay?” Claudie asks fretfully.

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “We’re just going to see him, okay?”

Claudie nods.

Stiles straps Conor into his car seat. Conor sucks his thumb. It’s a habit he regresses to whenever he gets overtired. Okay, so dragging his kids out of bed in the middle of the night isn’t Stiles’s best parenting decision ever, but what were his other options? It would have taken too long to get anyone to come and watch them. And he’s not going to leave them home alone in case they wake up and panic. Or attempt to use the stove and and burn the house down. Well, Claudie would probably burn the house down. Conor would accidentally transplant it into another dimension.

Seriously. Stiles’s life.

He slumps in the passenger seat as Liam drives.

Trees flash past the windows, and pretty soon they’re at the edge of town. Ten minutes after that and they’re pulling into the parking lot at the Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital.

John is standing by the entrance to Emergency. He jogs over to them when he sees the car pull in.

“He’s okay,” he says, folding Stiles into an embrace as soon as he’s out of the car. “He’s already awake again, and he’s _fine_.”

“Oh, thank fuck,” Stiles mutters, his legs going a little weak underneath him.

They head inside, Liam bringing up the rear with the kids.

Derek is lying in a bed in recovery, looking sour and grumpy.

“Stiles?” He shoots a narrow look at John. “You didn’t need to call him!”

“Son, if I hadn’t called him, he never would have forgiven me,” John tells him. “I’ll take a pissed off werewolf over a pissed off Stiles any day of the week.”

“Damn straight,” Stiles says, and slumps down in the chair beside the bed. “What happened?”

“Oh, Jesus,” Derek says as Liam enters the room. “You woke the kids up?”

“No, Derek,” Stiles says. “I left them alone in the middle of the night. Of course I woke the kids up!”

Claudie climbs up onto Derek’s bed and pats him on the knee. “Are you okay, Daddy?”

“I’m okay,” Derek tells her, his expression softening.

“Hello, Daddy,” Conor says around his thumb.

“Hello, Conor,” Derek says. A smile fights with his bitch face, and wins. He holds out his arms. “Come here, kid.”

Stiles exhales heavily. “So what happened?”

“Fell off a roof,” Derek says.

Oh, he fell off a roof. Of course he did.

“And you’re here instead of Deaton’s, because…?” Stiles prompts.

“Because my new partner doesn’t know that if I get hurt she should take me to the vet?” Derek’s eyebrows do something complicated and nuanced. “And also I was unconscious, and couldn’t tell her.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. “Okay, that’s surprisingly okay. Where is this new partner, and how can I thank her?”

Derek looks at John.

John scratches his nose and looks at the ceiling.

“What?” Stiles asks. “Seriously, one of you has to tell me before I snap and kill you both.”

“She’s upstairs,” John says at last. “In pediatrics.”

“In what now?” Stiles asks.

 

***

 

“Oh my fucking god,” Stiles says, earning himself a look from Derek’s new partner. “Hi,” he says, tearing his gaze away from the window separating them from all the newborns. “I’m Stiles. His husband. Nice to meet you. But also, oh my fucking god.”

There are three babies chilling in little plastic boxes behind the window. And one of them, Stiles is absolutely certain, is not human. He doesn’t even know why he knows, whether it’s his spark, or whether it’s because he’s spent so long living with wolves.

Derek is holding his hand.

“No,” Stiles says, pinching his nose. “Der, this was finally the year I was going to get my shit together and finish my degree, remember? It’s all part of my big plan to become a productive member of society. You _supported_ it.”

Derek nods worriedly.

“And also,” Stiles says, “we only just got a dog!”

“You cannot seriously be comparing Obi-Wan to a baby,” Derek says.

“Of course not,” Stiles says. “Maybe a little. Point is, we already took in a stray!”

“Don’t mind him,” Derek tells his partner. “His mouth engages before his brain.”

Stiles elbows him, then screws his face up as he looks through the window at the baby again.

Derek had told Stiles what happened when they’d been waiting for the elevator to get to this floor. Derek and his partner got a call about someone breaking into a warehouse. They’d got there just in time to chase the perp. Dramatic rooftop chase! Which ended when Derek fell off the roof. His panicked partner, rushing back downstairs, couldn’t believe the fall hadn’t killed him. She assumed he’d landed in the dumpster near where she’d found him, and somehow bounced out again like a Hollywood stunt man. Derek knows nothing but the concrete broke his fall, hard enough to knock him out for a while.

Then, while his partner had been waiting for an ambulance, she’d heard crying coming from the dumpster.

It’s a dumpster baby.

How the fuck is Stiles supposed to say no to an abandoned werewolf dumpster baby?

Last month when Conor coaxed a fresh green shoot out of the Nemeton, giggling, Deaton said that waking it would draw more supernatural beings their way, draw them like a magnet.

“We’re looking for his mom,” Derek’s partner says hesitantly.

Right. Like any wolf would abandon their pup willingly.

“No,” Stiles says firmly, then makes the rookie error of looking at the baby again. And then back at Derek.

“Oh, fuck you seriously, and your big sad eyes, Derek,” he mutters, and huffs. And, oh great, here come his dad and Liam and they have the kids with them, and this will be worse than the trip to the shelter when Claudie cried because they couldn’t take _every_ dog, and Conor magically unlatched every cage and it was just fucking chaos.

“This is why you called me?” he asks his dad.

"He's got pretty eyes," John says. Derek's partner gives him a weird look, but Stiles figures his dad is telling him the baby flashed his eyes at him and tipped him off to his supernatural heritage. “Seems like you two are pretty qualified,” John continues evenly.

Derek’s partner looks even more confused. Welcome to Beacon Hills.

“Fine,” Stiles says, because he knows he's already lost this battle. Hell, of course he has. “ _Fine_. Dad, can you find somewhere open and get some formula? Derek, I don’t care if you’re concussed, you’re coming home immediately and getting Conor’s crib out of the attic. Jesus, do we even still have the bottles? Dad, get bottles. And diapers. Lots of diapers. Derek, give Dad your credit card. And Claudie, put Conor down.”

Conor’s fingers squeak against the glass as Claudie sets him back down. Then he starts whinging because he’s too short to see the babies.

“You,” Stiles says, pointing at Derek’s partner. “I’m so sorry, but I’ve already forgotten your name. You go and find me a nurse who can open up this vault and let me hold my new son.”

She backs away slowly from the crazy man.

“My life is a _children’s_ movie,” Stiles mutters. “Oh, god, no, it’s worse. It’s the fucking _Brady Bunch_!”

Derek puts an arm around his shoulders and pulls him in for a hug.

Fine.

Fucking _fine_.

“We’re calling this one Luke,” he announces, glaring at Derek and daring him to complain. “Luke _Finn_.”

Derek’s mouth twitches in a smile he tries to hide, and then leans he leans in to kiss him on the cheek. “Luke Finn. We can do that.”

 

*** 

 

Jesus. What is Stiles's life even? 

He leans on the crib, Conor on his hip. Derek and Claudie are looking down at the baby too. 

What is his life? 

Pretty fucking cool actually. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *flings keyboard away* 
> 
> And we finish with teeth-rotting flush! 
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it. :D


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